Rise in number of tourists to Northern Ireland

The number of overseas visitors to NI increased in 2011

The number of overseas visitors to Northern Ireland increased by 6% in the first nine months of 2011, compared to the first nine months of 2010.

The figures, released by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency also show that overseas visitors spent an estimated £291m during this period.

This represented an increase of 20% compared with the same period of the previous year, 2010.

Northern Ireland residents are also choosing to holiday within the province, and the figures showed that 1.5 million took overnight trips to various hot spots with an associated spend of £121 million.

Overall an estimated 1,522,000 hotel, guesthouse and bed & breakfast rooms were sold in the period, an increase of 3% on 2010.

NI residents took 4.7 million leisure day trips within the North, of which 1.8 million were tourism-related visits, in the same period.

Welcoming the increasing number of visitors, tourism minister for Northern Ireland; Arlene Foster said that it was encouraging to be able to report an increase in visitors and trips from GB residents had also increased too.

The Minister continued to add: “This promising performance is very timely given the recent launch of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board’s NI2012 campaign, ‘Your Time, Our Place’ and momentum will increase as we move further into 2012.”

Foster also stated

"Tourism Ireland will also be rolling out a busy programme of promotional activity to target a range of potential visitors around the world in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games and will be liaising ahead of the games with ‘Visit London’ and ‘Visit Britain’."

The Minister went onto to welcome the statistics, adding: “The domestic market and the increasing popularity of the ‘staycation’ holiday is crucial to the long term sustainable growth of tourism in Northern Ireland.”

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