Carlow tourism industry saw over 300,000 visitors generate €80m in revenue last year
The new figures show that the county can still improve on its tourism sector

Carlow Castle
Carlow's tourism industry is holding its own with the big hitters in the South East with the county accounting for over 12% of all tourists visiting the region last year, according to a Failte Ireland report.
The South East had a total of 2.4 million tourists who spent €538 million in 2017 and Carlow saw 307,000 of these visitors - which means there is still room for improvement for the Dolmen County.
The figures show that 79,000 overseas visitors came to Carlow as part of their trip in 2017, generating €45 million for the local economy.
A total of 228,000 homegrown trips were made to Carlow in the same period, generating €36 million for the economy, bringing Carlow's tourism total to an estimated €81 million for 2017.
The South East's figures breakdown into 954,000 overseas tourists who spent €271 million, 1.4 million Irish residents trips generating €253 million in the region and 46,000 Northern Ireland resident trips generating €14 million.
Kilkenny meanwhile had a tourism industry in 2017 worth €94 million with 613,000 coming to the county across domestic and overseas visitors with Wexford boasting 886,000 visitors across the year generating over €200 million in revenue.
Dublin still enjoys the largest share of the tourism pot with 5.9 million overseas visited making their way to the capital, spending a whopping €2 billion.
Galway, Cork and Kerry enjoy over one million overseas visitors a year, while counties like Clare also performed very well in the figures.
The report was produced using a Fáilte Ireland survey of 10,000 overseas travellers and data provided by the Central Statistics Office and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.
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