Tourism trends
Tourism performance trends - current and historical figures are presented for total trips and holiday trips by market area and data on nights and spend are also provided.
The tourism sector is an important part of Northern Ireland’s economy, welcoming 5.3 million visitors in 2019 who spent an unprecedented £1 billion.
The tourism industry accounted for 9% of all employee jobs in Northern Ireland in 2019, with tourism employee jobs growing by 6,000 compared with 2017.
These figures show how well Northern Ireland tourism was performing prior to the impact of Covid-19 on the sector.
In 2019 a record breaking 3 million out of state visitors (visitors from outside NI) took an overnight trip in NI, double the number we welcomed in 2000 (1.5m), and if we look back to 1972 this figure was less than half a million.*
The closer to home markets have been performing well, with spend on ROI overnight trips in NI doubling in the last three years.
*Figures are not directly comparable due to changes in methodologies used to measure tourism performance