The full recovery of Ireland’s inbound and domestic tourism industry remains “some way off”, despite latest positive numbers, according to industry representative group the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC).
Its latest data show that 650,200 international visitors came to Ireland during July – with 214,000 coming from Britain, 160,000 from North America, 214,000 from mainland Europe and 35,000 from the resto of the world. The findings also showed that North American visitors were the highest spenders – accounting for €360m during the month of July.
However, ITIC also warned that soaring business costs and reduced tourism accommodation supply suggest that the key tourism month didn’t perform as strongly as hoped.
ITIC said: “Although the CSO’s new methodology of collecting airport and port data means that direct comparisons with 2019 are difficult to make there is enough evidence to point to the fact that tourism’s recovery to pre-pandemic levels has some way to go.”
