In August 2022:
More than 2,037,600 passengers arrived in Ireland on overseas routes.
This compares with 821,700 arrivals in August 2021 (a more than two-fold increase).
Some 1,836,400 passengers arrived by air and 201,300 by sea.
More arrivals came via Great Britain (689,700) than via any other country.
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The collection of Tourism Statistics at air and sea ports was suspended in March 2020, to protect CSO enumerators and the travelling public from COVID-19. As a result, the details of travel to Ireland classified by country of residence, which were previously presented in the monthly Overseas Travel release, are not currently available. To help fill the data gap, the CSO is publishing this Air and Sea Travel Statistics release which reports on the numbers of overseas travellers arriving and departing Ireland classified by travel route. The information is compiled primarily from statistics provided by the DAA (Cork and Dublin airports), together with data from other airports and sea ferry operators. In March 2022 the CSO resumed survey operations at Dublin Airport on a test basis, using a new data capture methodology. This testing will extend to the other air and sea ports over the remaining months of this year. Until these trials are complete and survey operations are fully scaled, the CSO will continue publishing these Air and Sea Travel Statistics to provide high level visibility on overseas passenger flows. |
Of the 2,037,600 passengers arriving in Ireland in August 2022, 9.9% (201,300) arrived by sea. This marks the end of a two year period in which the mode of arrival was shifted in favour of sea travel with 14.1% arriving by sea in August 2020 and 12.3% arriving by sea in August 2021. It also returns the share of sea travel to its pre-pandemic balance (9.9% of passengers also arrived by sea in August 2019).
In August 2022, one third (34.1%) of passenger arrivals (694,900) came or returned to Ireland on cross-channel routes (i.e. their point of embarkation was an airport or seaport in Great Britain, the Isle of Man, or the Channel Islands). Half (52.2%) of passenger arrivals (1,063,400) came or returned to Ireland on continental routes (embarking in a European airport or seaport other than in Great Britain, the Isle of Man, or the Channel Islands). More than one tenth (10.7%) of passenger arrivals (217,600) came or returned to Ireland on transatlantic routes (embarking in the United States or Canada). Just three in every one hundred (3.0%) of passenger arrivals (61,700) came or returned to Ireland on other routes (embarking in Africa or Asia).
Apart from Great Britain (which accounted for almost all cross-channel activity in August 2022), the most important country gateways for travel to Ireland were Spain, the United States, France and Italy, with these gateways accounting for 286,100, 180,500, 153,800 and 105,500 passenger arrivals respectively. When we compare these passenger flows to August 2019, we see that passenger arrivals embarking from Spain were 5.2% fewer than pre-pandemic and arrivals embarking from the United States were 16.0% fewer. However, passenger arrivals embarking from France and Italy increased by 1.7% and 6.0% respectively compared with August 2019.
Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (29 September 2022) released Air and Sea Travel Statistics for August 2022.
Commenting on the release, Gregg Patrick, Statistician, said: “The latest Air and Sea Travel Statistics show 2,037,600 passengers arrived in Ireland on overseas routes in August 2022. These passengers, comprising foreign visitors arriving in Ireland and Irish overseas travellers returning home, represent a very substantial increase on August 2021, when 821,700 passengers arrived on overseas routes The increase is even more substantial when compared with August 2020 when just 362,600 passengers arrived on these routes. However, passenger arrivals remain significantly lower (9.7%) than pre-pandemic August 2019, when 2,256,500 passengers arrived on overseas routes.
The recovery is seen in both modes of travel (air and sea), although the recovery in air travel is most pronounced as it has more than doubled when compared with August 2021. The recovery is also spread across all major routes, with transatlantic traffic up most in relative terms with five passengers arriving on transatlantic routes in August 2022 for every one passenger in August 2021. Among the continental routes, Spanish routes were the busiest, with 286,100 passengers arriving on these routes, a two-fold increase compared to August 2021.
However, in overall terms, Great Britain remained the most important departure country for overseas travel to Ireland, with 689,700 passengers arriving on air and sea routes from Great Britain, compared to just 247,100 in August 2021."