Irish people spent more than €1.15 billion on international travel in the fourth quarter of 2009 according to the Central Statistics Office.
The majority of the travel was within Europe, to which more than 1 million trips were made between October and December 2009, figures from the Household Travel Survey show.
Great Britain was the most visited country followed by Spain to which 249,000 trips were made.
Some 146,000 trips were made by Irish residents to North America for the same 3-month period.
International travel by Irish residents decreased 15.5 per cent on the same period in 2008.
Business travel expenditure increased by almost 15 per cent to €190 million while expenditure on holiday travel fell by over a quarter to €677.6 million.
Some €206.7 million was spent by Irish people visiting friends and relatives abroad, a decrease of 6.8 per cent.
Expenditure on domestic travel declined 8.3 per cent to €317.9 million, with spending on holidays in Ireland falling almost 17 per cent to €154.9 million.
While expenditure on domestic travel decreased, the total number of domestic trips taken by Irish residents remained virtually unchanged at 8,340,000 from 2008.
The number of domestic trips taken in the fourth quarter of 2009 fell by 2.5 per cent to 2,026,000 from the same period in 2008.
Holiday trips fell by almost 10 per cent to 819,000, while those for business were down 8 per cent to 172,000.