Aonghus O’Maicin

Statistics show that overseas visitors tend to spend more revenue in larger cities than rural areas around the island of Ireland.

The statistics suggest that although visitors from overseas tend to visit many of Ireland’s more rural counties, these counties still do not reap the financial benefits of the counties with larger population densities.

2013 statistics show the likes of Clare attracting 485,000 visitors spending around €94 million altogether in revenue. In contrast, Limerick City received less visitors with 420,000 visiting the city by the Shannon Estuary. However, Limerick received almost 44% more revenue more than Clare despite having less visitors.

It is most probable that this is due to the many services the city of Limerick has to offer in contrast to that of the Banner County. It is also very probable that Clare attracts overseas tourists visiting Galway as well as Limerick. Galway hosted 10% of overseas that visited the country in 2013 and many of those perhaps made the short distance to Clare even if they did not spend as much revenue there as in Galway.

With regard to domestic travel, rural counties seem to fair strongly. Domestic travellers often opt for places such as Donegal and Wexford when getting away for a few days. Wexford almost received double the visitors neighbouring Waterford did domestically. Rural counties such as Wexford also benefit financially from domestic visitors with them spending revenue in the area unlike their overseas counterparts.

In the west of Ireland, Galway proved to be popular among both overseas visitors as well as domestic visitors. Neighbouring Mayo also seemed to follow the trend of many other rural counties in Ireland attracting 373,000 domestic visitors to the county. Although Galway received almost double the domestic visitors of Mayo, it received five times more overseas tourists than Mayo in the same year.

Kerry proved to be an exception to the trends as they received a significantly high number of visitors both domestically and from overseas. This was to be expected with the manner in which Kerry’s reputation of a tourism hotspot has grown over the years.

Domestically, Kerry received 9% of all tourists that travelled in 2013. However, the positive news for the Kingdom’s economy was the manner in which they received 14% of all revenue spent by domestic visitors from all over the country. This illustrates that the people are more willing to spent money in Kerry in comparison to other counties when they holiday.

Sligo produced the poorest results of all the cities in the state having brought in only €83 million in revenue from both domestic and overseas visitors. This is particularly disappointing for the Gateway City especially when compared to other smaller cities such as Kilkenny and Waterford that although, did poorly revenue wise, brought in over 400,000 visitors each to the respective cities between domestic and overseas travellers.

Leitrim and Cavan took in en excess of €50 million in revenue during the calendar year. This was impressive given the low populations of both counties. What was more impressive was the manner in which the region outperformed Sligo who only received €44 million euro during the same calendar year.

Although the majority of cities tend to perform well with overseas visitors, it does not seem to apply with domestic visitors. Regions such as Roscommon, Westmeath and Longford brought in more visitors than the likes of Limerick and Kilkenny.

This may come as one of the biggest surprises within these findings. The same applied to the amount of revenue brought in by the region as it hauled in a respectable €37 million from domestic visitors. In contrast, both Kilkenny and Waterford only brought in approximately €30 million in revenue.

Dublin had almost 200% more overseas visitors compared to domestic visitors bringing in approximately €1.5 billion in revenue to the economy. This was 42% of all revenue brought into the country by overseas visitors.

Furthermore, they brought in only 14% of all revenue generated by domestic travellers within the country as the revenue appears to be spread more fairly across the regions and counties.

Cork and Galway City had similar success on smaller scales. This would not be a source of shock to most and would have been predicted due to the presence of many tourist attractions and the large volume in both areas.

It is important to note when observing the graphs containing percentages that some travellers may have visited more than one region. However, they act as an approximate illustration of how the visitors both domestically and from overseas travelled during the 2013 calendar year.