The tourism industry here has warned that in a worst-case scenario the sector may not recover to 2019 levels of activity until 2029.
However, the chairperson of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC), Ruth Andrews, has said that is not a prospect that the industry is focusing on and it is hoping for recovery to take place much sooner. "The most optimistic that we need to look towards is when we can get back to those 2019 levels of business, when we can get back to creating those numbers of jobs again and we do envisage that is possible by 2025 to 2026," Ms Andrews told the ITIC virtual conference. "But it is going to be contingent on the Government continuing to commit to tourism and continuing to invest," she added.