[caption id="attachment_68956" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Cruise ships, such as this one arriving in Dublin, are helping boost tourist numbers."]
The final figures for 2011 confirm the trend already recorded for the first three quarters of the year. Tourism in Ireland returned to growth in 2011 after three "most horrific" years for the sector, the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation has stated.
The number of overseas visitors increased by seven percent in 2011, the first increase since 2007, which itself was a record year for the tourism industry.
The recovery is largely due to a rise in visitors from the "big four" - Britain, the U.S., France and Germany - the countries from which 80 percent of visitors to Ireland come.
The Irish Times reported that final figures for the end of 2011 are expected to show a 10 percent increase in visitors from continental Europe, an eight percent rise in numbers coming from North America, and a five percent rise in visitors from Britain.
Growth was strongest in the earlier part of the year, with a dip in the last three months, which the confederation attributed to the debt ceiling crisis in the U.S. and growing uncertainty over the future of the euro.
While the 2011 figures indicated a turnaround for the industry, they followed several years of declining visitor numbers, confederation chief executive Eamonn McKeon said.
"2008, 2009 and 2010 were the three most horrific years the industry has ever experienced," he said.
In 2007 overseas visitor numbers reached just over 7.74 million. By 2010 this figure had fallen to 5.86 million. The final figure for the end of 2011 is expected to stand at 6.29 million with well over a million of this total originating in North America.
The government's decision to reduce the value added tax rate from 13.5 percent to nine per cent on most labor intensive tourism services was "crucial" to the industry's recovery in helping to restore competitiveness, confederation chairman John Healy said.
The industry had also shown it could be a significant contributor to the economic recovery of the country as a whole, with 6,000 tourism jobs created in the last six months, he added.
