The timing of Easter had an impact on people's travel habits, with fewer trips taken in the first three months of this year when compared to 2016.
Easter Sunday fell on April 16 this year, while last year it fell on March 27.
New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that just under 1.9 million domestic trips were made in the first quarter, a decrease of 9% on the same time last year.
Each trip had an average duration of two nights, resulting in 3.8 million bed nights, the CSO said.
Holidays accounted for 43.7% of all domestic trips, while 36.3% were to visit friends or relatives.
Today's CSO figures also show that domestic travellers spent more than €347m in the quarter, with holiday-makers accounting for more than half of that spend. Those visiting friends or relatives spent €82m in the three month period.
Meanwhile, a total of 1.6 million overseas trips were made by Irish people in the first quarter, up 5.5% year on year.
A total of 9.7 million bed nights were availed of by Irish residents travelling abroad in the first three months of the year and the average length of stay on these trips was six nights.
More than half of the trips abroad were classed as holidays, and overall more than €1.2 billion was spent by travellers - both business and pleasure - during their trip.
Of this almost €652m was spent on holidays, €263m on business trips and over €180m on visiting friends and relatives.
The UK and Spain were the two most popular destinations in terms of trip numbers at 624,000 and 267,000 respectively.
