Cliffs of Moher, Clare: Clare tops the list for locations where Irish overnight vacations in Ireland.Tourism Ireland / Irish Content Pool
According to figures from the Central Statistics Office, overnight domestic trips amounted to €3.1 billion in expenditure in 2023, surpassing the €2.9 billion generated from 13.3 million overnight domestic trips in 2022.
Holidays were the most common reason for overnight domestic trips last year, accounting for 45% of all journeys, while visits to family and friends accounted for 40% of visits.
Meanwhile, the number of overnight domestic trips for the final three months of 2023 was 11% higher than the same period in 2022.
The most common destinations for domestic overnight stays in Q4 of 2023 are as follows:
Irish residents also took a total of 12.6 million outbound overnight trips in 2023, with a total expenditure of €12.9 billion. Of these outbound trips 38% were to the United Kingdom.
These outbound overnight trips amounted to around 80 million bed nights, according to the CSO. The CSO also reported that the number of outbound overnight trips in Q4 of 2023 was a whopping 27% higher than the same period in 2022.
"This follows a similar pattern to Q4 2022, where the Southern region made up most domestic overnight trips (42%)," said Aaron Costello, Statistician in the CSO's Tourism and Travel Division.
Total domestic nights decreased slightly from 2022, dropping from 34.2 million to 34 million in 2023.
"In 2023 Irish residents took 15.4 million domestic same-day visits and 2.0 million outbound same-day visits," Costello said.
"Expenditure amounted to €717m on domestic same-day visits in 2023 which was down from the 2022 figure of €856m."