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2016 has been the best year ever for overseas tourism to Ireland
Minister of State, Patrick O'Donovan with Tourism Ireland CEO, Niall Gibbons at the Tourism Ireland end of year review
2016 has been the best year ever for overseas tourism to Ireland, with the number of visitors up 11% on last year.
Around 10.5 million visitors contributed more than €5.4 billion in revenue to the economy this year, 10% more than last year. All markets saw growth tin 2016, with the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Spain and Australia all turning in record performances.
Tourism Ireland's promotional activity this year included Ireland’s Ancient East, Dublin, the Wild Atlantic Way, Game of Thrones, Northern Ireland’s Year of Food and Drink and a successful campaign to capitalise on Euro 2016, as well as Tourism Ireland’s annual Global Greening initiative on St Patrick’s Day.
Tourism Minister of State, Patrick O’Donovan said:
“2016 looks set to be the best year ever for overseas tourism to Ireland – surpassing all previous records. The latest CSO figures confirm that almost 8.3 million people visited Ireland in the first ten months of 2016. That’s an amazing +11.6% increase by the end of October, or an additional 858,000 visitors on top of last year’s record. Good growth has been recorded from all our markets. Overseas tourism has contributed over €3.6 billion to the economy for the first nine months of 2016, which is a year-on-year increase of +9.4%. This is helping to sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs in communities around the country.”