Tourism in Northern Ireland: Visitors from Republic triple

The Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) is a permit which non-British and non-Irish citizens, who do not require a visa, will generally need to enter the UK.

That will include international visitors who arrive in Dublin and then plan to travel to Northern Ireland.

“It has been identified as a potential barrier to both regional and cross-border travel,” Ms Desmond said.

“Any sort of barrier has to have some sort of effect whether that be positive or negative, but in this instance we can’t see any positive impact likely to come out of this.

“We’ve come an awful long way considering that we’ve had an extended period of civil unrest and as a country we’ve got a real vibrant tourism industry in years after that that we’ll be looking to continue to grow.”

The Republic’s industry is much bigger, with the output of the broad tourism sector estimated at almost €14bn (£11.9bn) in 2019 compared to about €2.9bn in Northern Ireland.

The Republic also attracts a bigger proportion of “pure” holiday visitors compared to NI, where people visiting friends and family remains the largest share of the market.

The study says that almost half of visitors to Northern Ireland stay with friends and family compared to just over a quarter of visitors to the Republic.

It adds that this will “have a knock-on impact on levels of expenditure by visitors”.

It suggests the one opportunity for growth in NI could be “emerging capacity constraints” in the Republic’s market.