FÁILTE IRELAND is expecting a 4 per cent rise in numbers of overseas visitors this year after experiencing an “annus horribilis” in 2010.
Visitor numbers were down by 15 per cent last year, bringing them back to levels last seen in 1998. Estimated revenue was down from €5.2 billion to €4.6 billion and far below the peak of 2007 when earnings peaked at more than €6 billion.
The decline was most pronounced in the British market, which was down 18 per cent or 500,000 visitors on 2009. This market accounts for 45 per cent of visitors to Ireland.
The continental market was down by 17 per cent and the North American market by 9 per cent.
A majority of those involved in tourism accommodation, from caravans and camping to hotels, reported a fall in profitability last year. Two thirds of them cut prices to stay in business.
Dublin and the southwest, two of the areas most dependent on foreign tourists, were worst affected, with tourism spend down 17 per cent and 12 per cent in those areas respectively.
Fáilte Ireland chief executive Shaun Quinn blamed the decline in overseas visitors on the worldwide trend towards “staycations”, but he said the indications were that the decline in the British market had bottomed out.
He believed falling Irish prices, the appreciation of sterling and market research, which showed a measure of goodwill towards Ireland, would help attract British visitors back.
“These factors should provide an additional wind in our sails as the tourism sector intensifies its efforts to target the British market and maximise all the possibilities offered by our nearest neighbours,” he said.
He predicted the buoyancy of the German and French economies would attract more visitors this year while there were signs that the worst was over in the United States.
He said the Irish tourism industry was saved last year by the continued buoyancy of the home market, which held up despite the continuing recession because many Irish people chose to stay at home.
Mr Quinn also highlighted value-for-money trends which showed levels of satisfaction were increasing and levels of dissatisfaction decreasing. The reverse happened during the boom years.
Fáilte Ireland chairman Redmond O’Donoghue said 2010 could be summed up in the phrase “annus horribilis”. He said the best thing Irish tourism businesses did last year was survive in a very difficult environment – which included not just the recession but two protracted cold periods and the volcanic ash cloud in April.
Mr O’Donoghue, a former chairman of Bord Fáilte, said the Irish tourism product was better than ever and offered good value too. More importantly, he said, the perception that Ireland was an expensive country was also beginning to change.
Developing overseas markets was an imperative, he continued, as the home market was not likely to grow given the cuts to household budgets.
He predicted things would get “gradually better this year”, though there would be no surge in growth.
“The day we get up in the morning and it is better than the previous day is the day we’re all waiting for, and we believe we will be heading into that territory in 2011,” he explained.
He said the sector was buoyed by the endorsement of the Frommer's travel guide which chose Ireland as its top tourist destination for 2011, while the Irish restaurant sector was described by the influential French guide Le Guide du Routardas "unmatched the world over in terms of quality of food, value and service".
Mr O’Donoghue reckoned Ireland had between 70 to 80 too many hotels – not 150 as the economist Peter Bacon had suggested in a recent report.
