Domestic business travel numbers are down 43% on pre-pandemic levels for the first quarter of 2022.
Data released by the Central Statistics Office revealed that 78,000 domestic overnight business trips were taken in the first quarter of 2022, down 43% from the same period in 2020.
The 78,000 trips amount to 136,000 nights spent in the domestic hospitality economy in Q1 of 2022.
The average length of these stays remained consistent over previous quarterly data collected at nearly two nights per trip.
Estimated expenditure by Irish residents on overnight business trips has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels with Q1 in 2022 registering a total of €18m spent in the domestic economy. This compares to Q1 2020 where annual domestic spending on business trips was as high as €35m.
The slow down in domestic business travel compares to a significant rise in the data for people choosing to travel around Ireland for holiday purposes in Q1 2022 compared with the same period in 2020.
According to the data, the number of domestic trips for holiday purposes increased from 941,000 in Q1 2020 to just over 1 million in Q1 2022.
Domestic travel for business was one of the few categories to see a decrease in the number of trips taken in comparison with the same period in 2020.
It suggests that technological evolutions adopted during the pandemic such as video conferences are still a significant factor in how businesses operate today.