The availability of cheap flights to low-cost destinations may have contributed to a drop of 30,000 in the number of overseas visitors to Ireland in August.
The latest figures, released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) yesterday, reveal that 822,800 overseas trips were made here during the month of August. This represents a decrease of 3.5 per cent compared with the same month last year.
However, the total number of overseas visitors to Ireland for the first eight months of the year increasing by 3.5 per cent compared to 2003.
In a worrying sign for the industry here, the number of trips to Ireland by residents of Ireland's largest market, the UK, fell by 2.4 per cent in August, and by 0.6 per cent in 2003.
Trips to Ireland from North America decreased by 3.3 per cent in August, but are up 8.2 per cent on the first eight months of 2003. The number of Irish people making trips overseas increased by 5 per cent during August.
Mr Joe Byrne, director of marketing for Tourism Ireland, said that while he was "heartened" by the upward trend in overseas trips here, the situation regarding UK visitors was a concern.
"The increasing availability of cheap flights from Great Britain has been an advantage for Ireland for several years. But that advantage is now being extended to our competitor countries.
"Any place offering easy access and cheap flights is a competitor...for example, Eastern European destinations are fast emerging as competitors."
Mr John Power, of the Irish Hotels Federation, said the figures indicated Ireland faced a "major marketing challenge" in the UK. "We need to be more clever and more innovative in our thinking."