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The Central Statistics Office said today that the amount of money spent by Irish people on foreign travel dropped by almost 20% in 2009. Irish people made just under 7.3 million trips abroad last year, down 9.3% from 2008. The amount of money spent on these trips was down 19.5% to just under €5.8bn.
The number of trips within Ireland was almost unchanged from 2008 at 8.3m, but within this, holiday trips dropped 8.2% to just over four million. Domestic travellers spent just under €1.4 billion on trips, down 10%. This figure included an 18% drop in spending on holidays in Ireland to €843m.
Domestic Travel: In 2009 the total number of domestic trips taken by Irish residents remained virtually unchanged at 8,340,000 from 2008. However this included a fall of 8.2% to 4,037,000 in the number of holiday trips. Travellers spent just over 10% less at €1.389bn in total and of this, spending on holiday travel was down 18% to €843.3m. Meanwhile, domestic trips taken by Irish residents in Q4 2009 fell by 2.5% to 2,026,000 from the same period in 2008. Holiday trips fell by almost 10% to 819,000 while those for business were down 8% to 172,000. Trips spent visiting friends and relatives remained virtually unchanged at 792,000. Travellers spent on average at least 2 nights away from home.
Expenditure on domestic travel in Q4 2009 was down 8.3% to €317.9m from Q4 2008. Spending on holiday travel fell by almost 17% to €154.9m while that on business and visiting friends and relatives also fell by an average of almost 13%.
International Travel: Irish residents took 1,536,000 international trips in Q4 2009 and this was down 10.2% from the same period in 2008. Holiday trips were down almost by almost 22% to 799,000 and those for the purposes of business and visiting friends and relatives remained virtually unchanged.
Expenditure on international travel was down 15.5% to €1.159bn in Q4 2009 compared to Q4 2008. Business travel expenditure increased by almost 15% to €190.0m while expenditure on holiday travel fell by over a quarter to €677.6m. Spending on visiting friends and relatives fell by 6.8% to €206.7m.
In 2009, international trips taken by Irish residents fell by 9.3% to 7,292,000 from 2008. Travellers spent a total of €5.787bn and this was down by 19.5% from the previous year. In terms of expenditure per region visited, North America and Asia & Middle East fared the worst, falling by 25.7% and 22.5% respectively.
