2016 is the Best Ever Year for Irish Overseas Tourism

(Image Source: Travel Weekly)

2016 has been a beneficial year for Ireland’s International Tourism with more than 10.5 million visitors contributing €5.4 billion revenue which is a major increase of 11 and 10 percent of 2015. All the international markets of United States, Germany, Canada, Australia and Spain have hugely contributed to this growth performance. Ireland’s Ancient East, Richard E Grant Wild Atlantic Way campaign across the UK, Northern Ireland’s Year of Food and Drink, Game of Thrones campaign that reached 61 million people, special Star Wars campaign and annual Global Greening initiative on St Patrick’s Day helped largely in promoting Ireland’s tourism all through 2016.

To quote Minister of State for Tourism and Sport, Patrick O’Donovan TD, ‘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.”