The share the agency put on AI answers
Tourism Ireland says the material it publishes shapes close to one in five AI-generated answers about Ireland. Chief executive Alice Mansergh gave the figure on Thursday 15 October 2026 at Skift's Transatlantic Summit in Dublin. Skift reports the session and states that it asked the agency for the methodology. No Tourism Ireland publication read for this piece carries the share. No other outlet was found repeating it. The number rests on a first-party disclosure from the stage.
The survey the agency published
The agency's Overseas Sentiment Research for May 2026 ran through RED C as an online survey of more than 7,500 potential holidaymakers across eight markets. Fieldwork ran 21 May to 1 June 2026. The AI items report a base of 7,091 overseas holidaymakers, with Switzerland excluded to hold the comparison against June 2025.
AI sits among the top three inspirations for choosing a destination at 10 per cent, five points above June 2025. AI sits among the top three places people research and plan a trip at 16 per cent, seven points above the same baseline. Both questions take up to three answers.
What an answer set does to an hourly product
A traveller who asks a model for a few hours of pool time or a daytime room gets an answer the model composes from text it can read. Mansergh described the agency's response in three parts. It rewrote its digital content so generative models can parse it. It tracks the results. It publishes smaller regional experiences to spread visitors past the familiar stops.
Her examples are a sheepdog demonstration in Sligo and traditional boat building on the Aran Islands. She said a model left to itself repeats the well-known names, and that the models read Reddit, YouTube and Tripadvisor. Her advice to a destination is to choose what it wants to be known for, then get other voices repeating it.
She also warned against overuse of the tool, on the ground of consumer distaste for what Skift renders as AI slop.
The trip shapes behind the demand
The May 2026 wave carries the shape an hourly seller prices against. 18 per cent of potential visitors would stay in one place. 67 per cent would take both a city break and a country break. On timing, 45 per cent would go at any time of year, 33 per cent between June and September, and 21 per cent between October and May.
Halloween carries one seasonal hook. 64 per cent named folklore and origins, and 63 per cent modern-day festivals, on a base of 7,603. Among Americans the two interests read 85 and 86 per cent.
32 per cent have experimented with AI to help plan a holiday, on a module the agency fielded in November 2024.