Eight months after the first cracks in Irish tourism began to show – at least from a statistical point of view – it looks like things are finally improving. But is more trouble afoot?
Last September, results from the Central Statistics Office’s (CSO) Inbound Tourism series showed the number of those arriving into Ireland had dropped year on year by 0.7 per cent.
A blip? It appeared not – the same metric continued to slide, down 5.1 per cent in October and continuously over the following months, reaching a nadir of 30 per cent down last February.
If the industry was getting concerned, it was also getting confused. One only had to look at bookings on the ground, the hospitality sector began to say, to see something wasn’t quite right with the CSO’s numbers.
What followed was a sort of polite standoff between the statisticians and tourism bodies. Meetings were held, numbers were crunched, dissenting views were aired. The CSO, for its part, defended its data gathering, highlighting its characteristically robust methods and independently reviewed systems.
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But as things neared fever pitch, the fever broke. Data for April, published this week, showed another decline, certainly – down 4 per cent year-on-year – but also indications of recovery.
Michael Magner, president of the Irish Hotels Federation, said while there was still a discrepancy between the published figures and industry data, April’s were “more aligned with what businesses have been reporting on the ground”.
Hotels, he noted, saw average room occupancy rates of 77 per cent in April compared with 74.5 per cent for the same month last year, as well as a 2 per cent increase in bookings for the first four months of the year.
Tourism activity appeared to be holding up. But then another set of numbers kept the champagne corks firmly in place.
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“We are concerned about the overall drop in tourism spend which the CSO are reporting for April, down 10 per cent,” Magner said in a swift addendum to the positive observation on visitor rates.
“This would appear to be part of a wider trend so far this year, according to CSO figures. If this continues into the summer, it would pose an enormous challenge.”
Visitor spend was down 22 per cent in March, 31 per cent in February, and 28 per cent in January. In fact, one would have to go back to October to see an increase. If it’s not visitors, it’s how much they part with – what might May bring?
