The growth of Irish tourism since 1993 has been remarkable. Between that year and 1999 the number of holidaymakers coming to Ireland doubled to 3.3 million and the total number of visitors from outside this island (including people on business trips, visiting relatives or coming for other reasons) rose to more than six million. These visitors spent £1.9 billion here, as well as paying half a billion pounds to Irish transport operators in order to reach our island. Incidentally, almost 350,000 of these visits consisted of day-trips - only two-fifths of which were on business.
Almost three-fifths of the six million visitors came from Britain. But because visitors from other parts of the world - mainly Europe and the United States - stay longer (an average of 10 days, as against less than six in the case of British visitors), British visitors account for only two-fifths of total spending.
While the growth of tourism since 1993 has been remarkable, one must nevertheless note a number of disturbing trends.
First of all, the average length of stay of visitors has fallen significantly. The average length of stay of tourists has fallen since 1993 from more than 10 days to about 7 1/2. This means that although the number of tourists has more than doubled since 1993, the number of bed-nights spent here by tourists has grown in this period by less than half. This is a very worrying phenomenon - and one that is only minimally offset by the fact that the much less numerous business visitors have been extending the length of their average stay here.
Secondly, it now seems clear that the period of very rapid tourism growth from 1993 onwards has come to an end. Between 1993 and 1997 the number of visitors was increasing by 12 per cent a year, but last year the numbers grew by only 6 per cent and this year the increase seems to have been running at about 5 per cent.
The slowing of British economic growth in 1998 and 1999 does not seem a sufficient explanation of the scale of last year's sudden deceleration in the annual rise in the number of British visitors to Ireland.
On the other hand, this year's rapid rise in our domestic inflation would help to explain any slower growth in continental tourism that may have occurred this year. Looking to the future we must expect our inflation to have a continuing negative impact upon continental tourism.
None of this is particularly surprising: it was never going to be possible to maintain indefinitely the remarkable growth of the 1993-97 period, and this recent slower increase in tourist numbers was in fact foreseen by Bord Failte and was realistically built into its target figures. Nevertheless, this development is relevant to the current and future contribution of tourism to the growth of our economy.
The much slower growth in the number and spending of visitors to Ireland since 1998 has followed closely upon a phenomenal acceleration in the flow of Irish visitors abroad and especially to the Continent and the US. Between 1996 and 1999 the number of Irish tourist visits abroad rose by one-half, to a total of more than 1.75 million visits in 1999, and tourist spending rose by three-quarters to £1.2 billion.
Of course the growth of our economy has also given rise to a very large increase in the volume of business travel. Between 1993 and 1999 the annual number of business visits paid to Ireland doubled, from 500,000 a year to one million. That means that on average well over 3,000 business people now visit Ireland every day. And, of course, the number of Irish business visits abroad also rose during this period, by about three-fifths.
It is also interesting that although during this period involuntary emigration effectively ceased to be a feature of our society, growing prosperity has nevertheless led to an increase of a half in the number of family visits - in both directions. Last year almost 1.5 million of these were visits by emigrants to their families here, but almost a million visits were paid by Irish people to relatives or friends abroad - over two-thirds of them to Britain.
A consequence of the much faster growth of outward tourism than inward tourism has been a closing of the gap between tourist receipts and spending. Expenditure by Irish visitors abroad has now risen to the same level as spending by visitors of all kinds in Ireland - just over £1.9 billion in both cases. By contrast six years earlier we earned from tourism over a quarter of a billion pounds more than we were spending abroad. This negative shift in the balance of tourism payments was to be expected as we became more prosperous.
However, because so much of travel to and from Ireland is on Irish air and shipping lines, our balance of payment benefits substantially from the fares paid by visitors in both directions. Between 1993 and 1999 the receipts of these Irish carriers doubled to £900 million - which must be several times greater than the amount paid to foreign carriers by people travelling to and from Ireland. Irish airlines account for more than 70 per cent of all flights to and from Ireland.
An encouraging development in the last couple of years has been a recovery in the proportion of transatlantic visitors arriving here by direct flights from North America, rather than indirectly via other European countries. In the late 1980s the proportion of indirect transatlantic arrivals rose to about 50 per cent of the total of North American visitors and in 1995 this indirect share of the traffic jumped again to about 55 per cent.
However, since 1997 this indirect arrival proportion has fallen back to 48 per cent, reflecting the fact that in this two-year period the numbers arriving directly from North America rose by almost 44 per cent, whereas the number of indirect arrivals rose only marginally.
This sharp rise in the number and proportion of direct transatlantic arrivals appears to be a consequence of the alleviation several years ago of the compulsory Shannon stop requirement, which over so many years had done such serious damage to our tourist trade by discouraging US transatlantic operators from serving Ireland. This misplaced political intervention also did permanent damage to Aer Lingus by preventing it from developing Dublin as a European hub for transatlantic travel - opening the way for Manchester airport to displace this potential role for Dublin airport.
The time has surely come to remove the remaining unnecessary constraints on airlines operating direct transatlantic flights to and from Dublin. For these constraints are still preventing US airlines from giving our tourist trade the boost it badly needs at a time when its growth has begun to taper off. It is surely time for the two main political parties to give precedence to the development of transatlantic tourism over their selfish partisan concern about the floating fourth Dail seat in the Clare constituency.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie