Tourism contributed €13.5bn to the Irish economy in 2019 – the year prior to the Covid crisis – accounting for 4.4% of total Gross Value Added (GVA), with the EU average ratio being 4.5% for the same year.
This latest data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) also shows tourists spent €10bn while holidaying in Ireland in 2019.
Nearly three-quarters of that spend came from inbound tourists (73%), with 27% coming from domestic/staycation trips.
There were just shy of 285,000 people directly employed in tourism-related businesses, spread across 46,000 companies – giving tourism a 13% share of total employment in Ireland. That compared favourably to construction (6%) and agriculture (4%).
The CSO stats form part of its first Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) for the Irish tourism sector. This is an internationally-recognised harmonised framework for measuring tourist activity.
The output highlights the importance of tourism to the national economy, utilising supply and demand side data, drawing on National Accounts and more refined employment data, including activity in tourism related industries.
The Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC) has welcomed this first step in the development of the TSA, an issue which it has lobbied for over the past two decades and was a key recommendation in previous industry strategies for the sector.
Using 2019 data – the last full year of data pre-pandemic – the TSA also allows for the first time comparisons on tourism performance with other EU destinations. It is an invaluable tool for industry, agencies and policymakers, ITIC said.
