Falling numbers of visitors from Britain were the main factor behind an overall drop in trips to Ireland in September this year. Carl O'Brien reports.
Figures from the Central Statistics Office show 596,000 overseas trips were made to Ireland in September. This represents a decrease of 2.6 per cent compared to the same month last year.
In the first nine months of this year, however, there has been an increase of 2.8 per cent in the number of visitors to Ireland.
The number of trips from Britain in September fell by 6.2 per cent to 322,000 compared to the same period last year. In the year to date, numbers of UK visitors are down by 1.3 per cent.
Britain is the biggest source of overseas visitors to Ireland, accounting for more than half of the overall trips to this country.
In response to the falling numbers, Tourism Ireland has been engaging in a major autumn and winter marketing and promotions campaign in Britain.
Mr John Power, of the Irish Hotels Federation, said a number of factors, such as more low-cost flights to other destinations from Britain and the cost of living in Ireland, may be behind the decrease in numbers .
"The cost of living doesn't help and the smoking ban doesn't help, but we've got to live with these things," he said. "It's a major marketing challenge to try and recover the growth out of Britain and we're looking at means of addressing that."
A spokesman for the Minister for Arts, Tourism and Sport, Mr O'Donoghue, expressed concern at the falling number of visitors from Britain, but said overall figures pointed to a "creditable" performance for the tourism industry given the market conditions.