After a year of travel limitations, this was the first bank holiday weekend of the year where people could travel for non-essential reasons as European travel restrictions eased on July 19.
Thousands of Irish tourists have been travelling abroad over the weekend and into bank holiday Monday to some of Ireland’s most popular holiday destinations.
Despite the low number of people travelling, Dublin Airport has taken the opportunity to release its first bank holiday figures since 2019.
The airport said it welcomed 137,300 passengers over the August bank holiday weekend.
This figure is down 70% compared to August 2019, where the airport saw 454,300 passengers over the weekend.
That weekend in 2019 was Dublin Airport’s busiest August Bank Holiday Weekend in history.
Dublin Airport took to Twitter on Friday to announce the figures and added: “We haven’t issued bank holiday figures since 2019 so it’s time get back into the swing of it again despite low numbers travelling.
“This August BH @DublinAiport will welcome 137,300 passengers, down 70% when compared to Aug 2019 when we welcomed 454,300 passengers. #DUBWelcomeBack.”
Although lower than 2019, the amount of passengers walking through Dublin Airport gives a sense that things are beginning to get back to normal.
But Siobhan O’Donnell of the Dublin Airport Authority says that it will be another couple of years before the traffic volumes return to post-Covid numbers.
She told Dublin’s 98FM: “It’s difficult to say, but ACI Europe which is the voice of 500 airports across 53 countries in Europe is predicting that a recovery will come back around 2024, 2025.”
O’Donnell added: “But we’ll be working really hard to get our route network back up to where it was pre-Covid-19.”
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