Tourists spent £28.9m in 2009

THE estimated tourist spend in Londonderry for the last year for which figures are available (2009) was £28.9m - just 6 per cent of the NI total and lower than in Belfast (£128.2m), Coleraine (£59.4m), Down (£40.2m) and Fermanagh (£32.2m), according to Tourism Minister Arlene Foster.

By The Newsroom

Published 23rd Dec 2011, 09:23 BST

In neighbouring Limavady the estimated expenditure was £9.8m, whilst in Strabane it was £4.2m.

The total estimated tourist spend across Northern Ireland in 2009 was £507m.

Thus Northern Ireland’s second city accounted for just 6 per cent of the total tourist spend in Northern Ireland that year compared with Belfast’s 25 per cent.

The Minister provided the figures which were produced by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board (NITB) explaining that as they were survey based, they come with certain caveats.

“Estimates for spend in each district council area from 2010 to 2020 are not available,” she stated. “Tourism targets for visitor numbers and expenditure outlined in the Draft Programme for Government 2011-15, and the Draft Tourism Strategy to 2020 are based on the total Northern Ireland figure.”