Which is re expensive, a holiday at home or a holiday abroad. The home holiday wil always work out cheaper, but by just 30pc, according to the Central Statistics Office Household travel survey.
The figures releases this week show average length of stay on a holiday abroad was 5.3 nights and expenditure was €12,546.4m, or an average of €917 per head. The average spend was just down slightly from when 2023 when average spend was just over €1,000, according to the equivalent survey.
Of these 61.3pc were holiday trips, 25.4pc visiting friends and relatives, 7.3pc business and 5.5pc “other.” Irish trips abroad to Europe accounted for 57.2pc of the total, 32.9pc to Britain and non -EU Europe, 3.7pc to North America and 6.4pc elsewhere.
The average home holiday cost €211 a trip, about €17 more than 2023, but tends to be shorter at 2.1 nights, and has shortened by half a day since 2021. Domestic Irish holiday makers took 16,591,000 trips in 2024 and spent €3.5bn, of which 44.4pc were trips to visit friends and relatives, 37.7pc were holiday and 6.1pc were business.
When the length of the trip is taken into consideration, holidays abroad coat €7.28 per hour on average and home holidays €4.22 per hour, a difference of 72pc.
