Tourists spend less time in Ireland - hoteliers

Visitors are spending less time in Ireland in comparison to recent years, the Irish Hotels Federation said at its annual conference in Cork today.

John Power, chief executive of Irish Hotels Federation, said although preliminary figures suggested a 3 per cent increase in overall visitor number in 2004, bringing the total to 6.4 million, tourist revenues remained static at €5.2 billion.

This was attributed to the shifting trend away from two-week holidays to shorter breaks of three to five nights.

Visitor numbers from Britain are also down, falling by 1 per cent to 3.53 million. This has been attributed to the increasing popularity of Eastern European destinations and the growth of low cost airfares to these destination.

"People travelling to Ireland are staying for much shorter periods and the knock-on effect for regional tourism is cause for concern. There continues to be an uneven spread of visitors around the country, despite increased access to regional airports."

It wasn't all bad news, however, with domestic tourism performing well. Almost 40 per cent of the Irish population took a holiday break at home in 2004. Visitor numbers from North America were also up by 7.9 per cent, with the renegotiation of the EU/US bi-lateral aviation agreement a large part of maintaining these figures.

US tourists made up 15 per cent of all overseas visitors, but the IHF estimates a greater number of direct routes could lead to this increasing by 50 per cent to 1.5 million in the next five years.

"If we want to increase the number of visitors coming to Ireland, then we need to make it as easy as possible for them to get here, otherwise they'll simply holiday elsewhere," Mr Power said.