Tourism targets achievable but hardly ambitious

About 18 months after consultations began, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Minister Paschal Donohoe launched the Government's new tourism policy yesterday. The main thrust is to increase both the numbers of people holidaying here and the amount of money they spend.

The target is to increase the number of visitors to 10 million by 2025 from 7.6 million last year. Over the same period, the coalition also wants the revenue generated by those holidaymakers – that is the money that they spend excluding the actual cost of getting here – to grow to €5 billion from €3.5 billion.

Fundamentally, that means the Government expects the average tourist to spend €500 while they are here. That seems likely, particularly given that a recent survey showed that the cost of hotel rooms in central Dublin is likely to hit €109 a day next year.

The odd thing about the revenue figure is that it represents a step backwards. In 2003, the Tourism Review Group set €6 billion as the 2012 target for the industry. That was not reached, so a reassessment might be fair enough. However, it would be hard to argue that an increase of €1.5 billion over 10 years would represent anything other than modest growth.

And the targets themselves seem slightly out of line with the Government statement, which said the new policy would shift from focusing on increasing numbers to growing revenue.

On the basis of the Government’s own figures, the 7.6 million people who holidayed here in 2014 spent an average of €460 each. Its new policy document envisages that the 10 million people who will come here in 2025 will increase that by €40 each, or less than 8.7 per cent.

In fact, the figures give the impression he Government simply looked at last year’s average spending per head and tacked on a reasonable- sounding increase to come up with a nice round figure, such as €5 billion, and set that as the target.

Whether or not that is the case, the policy simply boils down to increasing the number of visitors by 2.4 million over 10 years and getting them to spend €40 more each. It is probably achievable, but you would hardly call it ambitious.