POLICY PAPER UK Tourists, the Great Recession and

the dominant country of origin of visitors to Ireland, did not fall faster than UK visits elsewhere. We use a pooled travel cost model for UK travellers to estimate price elasticities of tourism demand for various market segments. The proposed reduction in the travel tax, and the reduction in the VAT rate for “tourism goods and services ” would lead to a modest increase in visitor numbers and expenditure. However, the increase in expenditure is small compared to the forgone tax revenue. Like many sectors of the Irish economy, tourism was hit hard by the GreatRecession. Between 1985 and 2008, the number of international visitors to the Republic of Ireland rose from 1.9 million to 8.5 million visitors per year, an average growth rate of 6.7 per cent per year. Between 2008 and 2010, the number of visitors fell to 6 million, an average rate of decline of 15 per cent pe