Germany

Germany is the third-largest market for overseas tourism to the island of Ireland and is our largest source market from continental Europe.    

Huge potential: Germany is the second largest outbound tourism market in the world, with German residents normally making 67 million trips abroad every year, mainly within Europe. 52.9 million travellers travelled in 2023. Over 55% of the travellers stay longer than 5 nights. Still 50% of the packaged trips are booked through travel agencies.  For their main holiday, Germans plan on average 13.2 nights. So, the market presents huge potential.   

High spenders:: Visitors from Germany stay longer and spend more than the average visitor. Favouring hostels and B&Bs as well as hotels. Camper business is picking up very well. Germans love to explore the Ireland and like booking roundtrips which are offered by bus, by rental car or even newest by public transport. In 2023 Germany also won the Connoisseur Circle award of being the “Best Newcomer destination” for luxury travel.  

Resilient market: Over the years, the German visitor to Ireland has proven resilient in times of tourism downturns and travel tends to recover quickly with an economic upswing or lifting of other barriers to travel.  They also tend to be very faithful repeaters if they´ve once experienced the island. 

Trade: Monika Woermann, Denise Quinn and Mary Lyons in our Trade Team maintain constant contact with our German Tour Operators and Travel Agents, supporting them with the latest updates from Ireland and closely monitoring developments in the market.  We continue actively to explore new opportunities and platforms for our Island of Ireland Industry partners to meet German trade in tailored in person meetings, shows, events, famtrips or e-learnings and webinars.  

Consumer: We are very active in our publicity and consumer advertising with strong integrated campaigns in TV, digital, Radio and OOH channels combined with co-op marketing or partnerships with operators and travel agency chains or OTAs. Your offers will form a central part of these campaigns. Until then, our Consumer Team is keeping the destination very much top of mind with German consumers through our so called “warm channels”. We share inspiring content daily with over 402k fans and followers on our social media channels and our ezine is sent biweekly to over 65k potential visitors. Why not join us on our Facebook, Instagram , Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube and Tiktok pages to get an insight into what inspires the German visitor? You can also get involved in Tourism Ireland’s #IrlandLässtDeinHerzHöherSchlagen“ campaigns where we share inspirational photos, quotes and video content from Ireland with our communities in each market.