Increase in spending on domestic and overseas travel

The amount of money Irish residents spent on domestic and overseas trips is rising again - but it has not yet recovered to 2010 levels, according to figures released by the Central Statistics office.

According to the latest household travel survey Irish residents spent €852 million on domestic travel - whether for business, pleasure or visiting friends or other reasons – in 2014. But this figure was still below the €972 million spent in 2010.

The spend on travel outside the State was many times higher, but still less than 2010 levels. According to the survey Irish residents spent almost €5.6billion in out-of-State travel expenses in 2014 - but again this was less than the 2010 figure of €5.89 billion.

The quarterly bulletin also shows Irish residents took 1.65 million domestic trips in the last quarter of 2014 - an increase of 6 percent when compared to the similar period in 2013. These trips amounted to four million bednights with 743,000 spent in hotels . The trips which included those for education and training purposes were worth €324 million to the economy in the three month period with holidaymakers contributing almost €155 million of that figure.

Those visiting friends or relatives spent €89 million in the period.

The numbers of outbound travel trips in the last quarter of 2014 was slightly less than domestic trips, at 1.5 million, - but this represented a much larger investment by trippers with a spend of €1,205 million. The number of trips was also up by a greater amount than the domestic trips, with an increase of almost 10 percent over the previous year.

A total of 10.1 million bed nights were availed of by Irish residents travelling abroad in the fourth quarter of 2014, with an average length of stay on outbound trips of almost seven nights. In terms of destination the UK remains the most popular location for travel in terms of number of trips at 607,000, followed by Spain at 273,000 and France at 86,000.

Visitors who stayed in hotel accommodation abroad accounted for 4.1 million nights while those staying with family and friends accounted for 2.7 million nights. Of the €1,205 million spend on outbound trips in the last quarter of 2014, some €661 million was spent on holidays, €244 million on visiting friends or relatives and €204 million on business trips.

On an annual basis Irish residents took almost 7.4 million domestic trips in 2014, resulting in 21.2 million bed nights at a cost of almost €1.5 billion.

Almost 6.7 million outbound trips were undertaken by Irish residents in 2014 with expenditure in the region of €5.598. However while this figure was higher than similar figures for the previous three years, it was lower than €2010 when Irish residents spent almost €5.89 billion going abroad.

Patsy King of the CSO said the figures showed that while business trip spending grew by about €118 million between 2010 and 2014, spending on overseas holidays fell from €3.8billion in 2010 to €3.1 billion in 2011 and in 2014 had only recovered to €3.4 billion.