The Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) has said latest monthly inbound tourist visitor numbers are more in-line with what it is hearing on the ground, amongst its members.
Latest Central Statistics Office (CSO) data show around 528,100 tourists completed a trip to Ireland in April, down 4% year-on-year; but up 14% on the same month in 2023.
Visitor spend amounted to €375m, for the month. That was 10% down on April 2024, but 1% up on April 2023.
The largest contingent of visitors came from Britain, followed by the US.
The average length of stay was up slightly, year-on-year, at 6.5 nights.
Michael Magner, President of the Irish Hotels Federation said that, while there is still a difference between the published figures and industry data, the April figures are more aligned with what businesses have been reporting on the ground.
Mr Magner said: “Our own industry figures, for example, show that hotels achieved average room occupancies of 77% in April compared with 74.5% for the same month last year. Meanwhile we have seen a 2% increase in bookings for the first four months of the year. From an industry perspective, this would suggest that overall tourism activity continues to hold up so far in 2025, despite the significant difficulties faced by tourism and hospitality businesses.
“We are concerned about the overall drop in tourism spend which the CSO are reporting for April, down 10% compared with the same month last year. This would appear to be part of wider a trend so far this year, according to CSO figures. If this continues into the summer, it would pose an enormous challenge for tourism businesses throughout the country that are already struggling to deal with unsustainable increases in the cost of doing business right across our industry.”
