Last updated: September 2026. Human written and fact checked against each named source.
Ireland’s wellness economy is worth just over 20 billion US dollars a year, Irish people spend more on wellness per head than almost any other nation, and half of Irish tourism businesses say their revenue is down on last year. This page gathers the most current, verifiable spa and wellness tourism statistics for Ireland in one place, drawn from the CSO’s monthly tourism releases, the Global Wellness Institute’s country rankings and Fáilte Ireland’s own industry research. It is written for journalists, students, tourism operators and anyone who needs a sourced Irish figure on wellness spending, visitor numbers or domestic breaks.
Key Spa and Wellness Tourism Statistics for Ireland at a Glance
- Ireland’s wellness economy was worth 20.24 billion US dollars in 2024, the 41st largest in the world. Source: Global Wellness Institute, Country Rankings 2019 to 2024
- Ireland ranks 14th in the world for wellness spending per person, at 3,762 US dollars a year, ahead of the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Finland. Source: Global Wellness Institute, 2026
- Irish residents spent 9.2 million nights on domestic trips in the second quarter of 2026, up 5% on the same quarter of 2025, with holidays the main purpose of 48% of those trips. Source: CSO Household Travel Survey Q2 2026
- 788,700 foreign visitors completed a trip to Ireland in August 2026, up 2% on August 2025 and up 3% on August 2024. Source: CSO Inbound Tourism August 2026
- Overnight visits by foreign residents in the first eight months of 2026 reached 4.7 million, an 11% increase on the same period in 2025. Source: CSO, September 2026
- Half of Irish tourism businesses (51%) reported revenue down so far in 2026 against 2025, with just 24% reporting an increase. Source: Fáilte Ireland Tourism Businesses’ Sentiment Survey, May 2026
- A third of operators (33%) say targeting the domestic market is one of their main responses to current trading conditions. Source: Fáilte Ireland, May 2026
- Foreign visitors spent €729 million in Ireland in August 2026, down 2% on August 2025 and down 11% on August 2024. Source: CSO Inbound Tourism August 2026
- Ireland’s wellness economy grew by 35% between 2019 and 2024, from 15.03 billion to 20.24 billion US dollars, calculated from Global Wellness Institute country data
- The global wellness economy reached 6.8 trillion US dollars in 2024 and is projected to hit 9.8 trillion by 2029. Source: Global Wellness Institute
Ireland’s Wellness Economy in Numbers
The Global Wellness Institute measures the wellness economy across eleven sectors, including spas, wellness tourism, physical activity, personal care and traditional medicine, for more than 200 countries. Its most recent country rankings, covering 2019 to 2024, put Ireland’s wellness economy at 20.24 billion US dollars in 2024, the 41st largest in the world. Source: Global Wellness Institute, Country Rankings 2019 to 2024. All figures in this section are in US dollars because that is the currency the institute reports in.
The trajectory since 2019 shows a sharp pandemic dip followed by a strong recovery. The table below is compiled from the institute’s country time series.
| Year | Wellness economy (US$ billions) | World rank |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 15.03 | 42 |
| 2020 | 12.45 | 44 |
| 2021 | 15.15 | 44 |
| 2022 | 17.75 | 40 |
| 2023 | 18.70 | 40 |
| 2024 | 20.24 | 41 |
Ireland’s wellness economy fell by 17% in the pandemic year of 2020 and then grew by 63% between 2020 and 2024, ending 35% above its 2019 level, all calculated from the table above. For context, the institute puts the global wellness economy at 6.8 trillion US dollars in 2024, up 7.9% in a year and double what it was eleven years earlier, with a projection of 9.8 trillion by 2029 on annual growth of 7.6%, well ahead of the 4.5% global GDP growth the IMF forecasts. Source: Global Wellness Institute.
Why Ireland Ranks 14th and 125th at the Same Time
Two of the institute’s rankings tell apparently opposite stories about the same country, and the gap between them is worth understanding before anyone quotes either number. On spending per person, Ireland ranks 14th in the world at 3,762 US dollars of wellness spending per head each year, just ahead of the United Kingdom at 3,773 dollars in 13th and comfortably ahead of Finland and the United Arab Emirates. On wellness as a share of the national economy, Ireland ranks 125th, with wellness accounting for 3.51% of GDP in 2024, down from 3.69% in 2019. Source: Global Wellness Institute, 2026.
The explanation is Ireland’s unusual GDP. The same institute records Irish GDP per capita at 106,456 US dollars, the second highest in the world, a figure inflated by the accounting activities of multinational companies rather than by domestic economic activity. Measured against that denominator, almost any domestic sector looks small. The per capita spending figure is the more meaningful one for anyone assessing the Irish wellness market, and on that measure Irish consumers are among the highest wellness spenders on earth. Overall tourism tells a similar story, accounting for just 2.37% of Irish GDP in 2024 and ranking 113th, per the same source.
Overseas Visitors and What They Spend
The CSO publishes inbound tourism figures monthly, and the most recent release covers August 2026. It found that 788,700 foreign visitors completed a trip to Ireland in August 2026, up 2% on August 2025 and up 3% on August 2024. Those visitors stayed 6.6 million nights, an average of 8.3 nights each, down from 8.6 nights a year earlier. Source: CSO Inbound Tourism August 2026, published 29 September 2026.
Great Britain supplied the largest share of August visitors at 36%, followed by Continental Europe at 34%, North America at 25% and the rest of the world at 5%. Just over half (51%) came for holidays, leisure and recreation, 33% to visit friends and relatives and 8% for business. Year to date, overnight visits by foreign residents reached 4.7 million in the first eight months of 2026, an 11% increase on the same period in 2025 and 1% above 2024. Source: CSO, September 2026.
Spending has been less consistent than visitor numbers. Foreign visitors spent €729 million in August 2026, down 2% on August 2025 and down 11% on August 2024, even though more people came. Earlier months ran the other way: €681 million in July, up 9% year on year, €697 million in June, up 8%, and €608 million in May, up 27% on a weak May 2025. Sources: CSO Inbound Tourism July 2026, June 2026 and May 2026. More visitors staying slightly fewer nights and spending less per head in peak season is the pattern worth watching in the next few releases.
The Domestic Market
For spas, salt rooms and wellness centres, the domestic market matters far more than the inbound one, and it is growing. The CSO’s Household Travel Survey found that Irish residents spent 9.2 million nights on domestic trips in the second quarter of 2026, a 5% increase on the same quarter of 2025, with domestic overnight trips up 3%. Holidays were the single largest purpose, accounting for 48% of domestic trips, ahead of visiting friends or relatives at 36% and business at 6%. Source: CSO Household Travel Survey Q2 2026, published 11 September 2026.
The first quarter was stronger still. Irish residents spent 6 million nights on domestic trips in the first quarter of 2026, up 9% on the same quarter of 2025, with trips up 6%. In that off-season quarter, visits to friends or relatives edged ahead of holidays as the main purpose, at 39% of nights against 38%. Source: CSO Household Travel Survey Q1 2026. Taken together, the first half of 2026 saw domestic nights rise in both quarters while outbound travel softened: Irish residents took 4.1 million overnight trips abroad in the second quarter, a 3% decrease on the same period in 2025.
How Irish Tourism Businesses Are Trading
Visitor volumes and business revenue are not the same thing, and Fáilte Ireland’s own survey of operators makes the gap plain. In its Tourism Businesses’ Sentiment Survey published in May 2026, 51% of businesses reported that revenue was down so far in 2026 compared with 2025, against 24% reporting an increase and 25% reporting no change. Looking ahead, 43% expected revenue to fall over the remainder of the year while 29% expected a rise. Source: Fáilte Ireland, May 2026.
Dublin is the clear outlier. Among Dublin operators the proportion reporting revenue up (38%) matched the proportion reporting it down, and 43% of Dublin businesses expected revenue to rise over the rest of the year against 26% elsewhere in the country. Costs are the common complaint: about three quarters (74%) of operators said the war in the Middle East had affected their business, and among those affected, 74% cited higher energy costs, 55% other cost increases, 53% fuel protest disruptions, 50% increased cancellations and 45% lower bookings than the previous year. Source: Fáilte Ireland, May 2026.
The responses operators are considering point in one direction. The most common are finding ways to cut costs (55%), absorbing increased costs (33%) and targeting the domestic market (33%), and the survey notes that operators who are optimistic about the year are pinning those hopes on Irish holidaymakers spending more at home. Set against the CSO’s domestic travel figures, which show nights away within Ireland rising in both quarters of 2026, that looks like a reasonable bet.
The Competition From Abroad
Every domestic wellness break competes with a flight out of the country, so the outbound numbers are part of the same picture. Irish residents took 4.1 million overnight trips outside Ireland in the second quarter of 2026, a 3% decrease on the same quarter of 2025, spending 22.6 million nights abroad. Holidays accounted for 72% of those nights, visits to friends and relatives 19% and business 4%, and the average trip abroad shortened slightly from 5.6 nights to 5.5. Source: CSO Household Travel Survey Q2 2026.
The first quarter ran the other way, with 3.1 million overnight trips abroad, a 5% increase on the first quarter of 2025 and 13.9 million nights, of which holidays made up 59%. Source: CSO Household Travel Survey Q1 2026. Read alongside the domestic figures, the pattern through the first half of 2026 is of Irish people taking more and longer breaks at home while trips abroad flattened in the spring and dipped in early summer.
Method and Sources
Every figure on this page was checked against its primary source in September 2026. Wellness economy size, per capita spending, rankings and the global totals come from the Global Wellness Institute’s report The Global Wellness Economy: Country Rankings, Data for 2019 to 2024, published in 2026 and read directly from the report PDF; the 17% pandemic fall, the 63% recovery and the 35% rise on 2019 are described as calculated because we derived them from the institute’s own country time series. Overseas visitor numbers, nights, origin markets, trip purpose and expenditure come from the CSO’s monthly Inbound Tourism releases for May to August 2026, the most recent of which was published on 29 September 2026. Domestic and outbound travel figures come from the CSO Household Travel Survey for the first and second quarters of 2026. Business trading conditions and expectations come from Fáilte Ireland’s Tourism Businesses’ Sentiment Survey of May 2026. Wellness figures are reported in US dollars because that is the currency the Global Wellness Institute uses; CSO tourism expenditure is in euro and excludes fares. The page will next be reviewed when the CSO publishes its next quarterly Household Travel Survey and when the Global Wellness Institute updates its country rankings.
Where Salt Cave Paradise Fits In
Salt Cave Paradise is a wellness centre in Balbriggan, County Dublin, and the numbers above describe the market we work in every day: a country whose people spend more on wellness per head than almost anywhere else, a domestic travel market that grew in both quarters of 2026, and an industry where a third of operators are deliberately turning toward Irish customers. Most of our visitors are day guests rather than tourists, coming for an hour in the salt rooms, the salt water cave or the rooftop jacuzzi, sauna and ice bath. If you are planning a break or a group day out, you can browse our spa packages in Dublin, look at our couples spa package, or book a session online.
