Dear Ed,
Reaccreditation of Northern Ireland Tourism Statistics
I hope this finds you well.
As you will recall, in April 2020 NISRA temporarily suspended the designation of National Statistics for the Northern Ireland Tourism Statistics series. This was due to the unavailability of data from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO) Household Travel Survey, which is a critical input for estimating overnight trips to Northern Ireland by visitors from the Republic of Ireland. Further detail can be found in the original correspondence on the temporary suspension of designation.
Although the CSO resumed publication of this data in September 2020 and confirmed the comparability of the series with pre-pandemic data, the disruption caused by COVID-19 to broader tourism data collection across 2020, 2021 and 2022 meant that the series could not immediately return to National Statistics designation. During this time, NISRA continued to publish selected Official Statistics, including alternative data sources, passenger flows and accommodation occupancy, and remained committed to transparency about data limitations.
I am pleased to advise that regular publication of the Northern Ireland Annual Tourism Statistics resumed in August 2024 (covering the 2023 calendar year), with the second Annual Tourism publication in this series (the Annual Tourism Statistics 2024) being released on Thursday 29th May 2025.
In view of the work that has been undertaken in the Tourism space since the temporary suspension, we believe that the current annual and quarterly Tourism publications and associated supporting user guidance and materials meet the expectations of the Code of Practice for Statistics. Accordingly, I am writing to seek your assistance in initiating the review process for NISRA’s Tourism statistics.
The Tourism team at NISRA will be happy to support the OSR in whatever way that we can with this and, as always, will both welcome and value any observations/ recommendations that emerge.
Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further information, the NISRA tourism team will continue to liaise closely with your office as required.
Yours sincerely,
Brian Green
Director of Economic Statistics, NISRA