Belfast Tourism continues to drive the NI visitor economy

(Source: Visit Belfast)

Visit Belfast’s Chief Executive today (6 July) welcomed the official Northern Ireland Local Government District Tourism Statistics for 2016, published by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), which showed that in 2016, Belfast generated £334 million for the local economy and increase of 20% on 2015.

“The NISRA figures show that Belfast’s tourism industry continues to play an important part in growing the city’s economy and Belfast is key to driving Northern Ireland’s tourism economy.” said Mr Lennon.

Continuing, “… but what is even more exciting, is 2017 is already shaping up to be even more successful than last year. For the first five months of the year, hotel room occupancy in Belfast was 79 percent, up eight percent on the same period in 2016. The city will also welcome more cruise passengers than ever before - by the end of the cruise season, 91 ships will dock, carrying over 155,000 passengers and crew. Interest in the destination is also up significantly. To date, Visit Belfast has handled 26 percent more visitor enquiries compared to the same period last year.

“Visit Belfast works very closely with our funders Belfast City Council and Tourism Northern Ireland, as well as our corporate and strategic partners, our 500 industry partners, Tourism Ireland and Invest Northern Ireland to deliver real results for the city, and today’s figures show that this partnership approach is paying off.”