Tourists visiting Ireland last month surged by 18% as their spending increased to \u20ac608m.<\/p>\n
New data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows some 661,500 foreign visitors completed a trip to Ireland in May, an increase of 18% when compared with May 2025 and up 6% on May 2024.<\/p>\n
The average length of stay for foreign resident overnight visitors was 7.2 nights, down from 7.3 nights last year.<\/p>\n
Visitors from Great Britain accounted for the largest share at 36%, compared with Continental Europe (33%), North America (26%), and the Rest of the World (4%).<\/p>\n
Spending by foreign visitors in May was estimated at \u20ac608m, up 27% compared with May 2025 (\u20ac477m), and up 1% compared with May 2024 (\u20ac603m).<\/p>\n
The CSO data is based on a survey of approximately 13,000 departing passengers each month at ports and airports.<\/p>\n
Foreign visitors who departed Ireland in May 2026 stayed a total of 4.8 million nights in the country, up 16% on May 2025 and up 7% on May 2024.<\/p>\n
Edward Duffy, statistician in the Tourism and Travel Division, said expenditure in Ireland, excluding fares, was \u20ac608m in May.<\/p>\n
“Visitors from North America accounted for \u20ac246m (40%), Continental Europe for \u20ac198m (33%), Great Britain for \u20ac121m (20%) and visitors from the Rest of the World for \u20ac43m (7%).\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Taken together, this represented an increase of 27% when compared with May 2025, and a rise of 1% when compared with May 2024.”<\/p>\n
Visitor numbers rose in May 2026 when compared with May 2025: Great Britain (+21%), Continental Europe (+25%), North America (+5%), and Rest of the World (+36%).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The leading purpose for travel to Ireland was for Holidays, Leisure & Recreation (46%), followed by Visiting Friends & Relatives (31%), and Business trips (12%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tourists visiting Ireland last month surged by 18% as their spending increased to \u20ac608m. New data from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,6306],"class_list":["post-517821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}