The number of people travelling to Britain by ferry fell dramatically in the second quarter of the year, with passengers opting increasingly to go by air, new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) reveal.

The new tourism figures for the period from April to June show numbers travelling by air increased by by 21 per cent to 588,000.

At the same time there was a reduction of 17 per cent in the numbers travelling on sea routes. A total of 85,000 passengers travelled to Britain by sea in the second quarter of the year compared with 103,000 for the same period in 2004. In the April -June period in 2003 around 116,000 passengers used the ferry to Britain.

Overall the new CSO figures highlight that the Irish are continuing to travel abroad in record numbers. In the second quarter of the year Irish people made 1,626,000 visits abroad, an increase of 14 per cent on the corresponding period in 2004.

Over 870,000 visits were made by Irish residents to continental Europe between April and June, over 650,000 visits to Britain and nearly 80,000 to the US and Canada.

The figures indicate that Irish residents made 400,000 more visits abroad in the three months from April to June this year than they did in the same period in 2002.

The number of visits made to the Republic from overseas in the second quarter, at 1,803,000, represented an increase of two per cent. However, a breakdown reveals that visitor numbers from the United States and Canada fell slightly during the period while those from the UK increased by one per cent.

The CSO figures also show that pressure on the traditional guest house and B&B sector is continuing. The number of bednights spent in guest houses by overseas visitors to the Republic fell by 12 per cent in the second quarter of 2005 compared with the same period last year.

The number of Irish residents travelling on both continental and transatlantic routes in period from April to June was 13 per cent higher in each category than in the same period in 2004.

The CSO figures reveal that there were 1,803,000 overseas visits to the Republic in the second quarter of the year compared with 1,762,000 in the same period in 2004. The largest increase in the number of visits to the Republic came from mainland Europe.