Tourism Ireland expects overseas tourism revenue to the island to grow to over €10 billion annually by 2031 - up 6% on average each year.
The chief executive of Tourism Ireland, Alice Mansergh, said overseas tourism is a vital driver of revenue and jobs right across the island of Ireland.
"We have an ambitious plan to support the tourism industry throughout 2026," she said.
"Overseas visitors spent over €6 billion in 2025, and we'll be targeting growth to over €10 billion by 2031, supporting the minister's strategy, 'A new era for Irish Tourism’", she said.
Tourism Ireland said visitor numbers and spend were soft last year compared to 2024, but saw consecutive months of visitor growth from August onwards.
It said macro-economic uncertainty and the Dublin Airport passenger cap at the beginning of the year were challenging for the sector.
Today's marketing plans for the year ahead are being launched against the backdrop of new US tariff threats being discussed by European Finance Ministers.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Ms Mansergh addressed concerns around how geopolitical change can impact on consumers' confidence and how they feel about their finances or safety.
"Last year, as an example, one quarter of our overseas audiences said things were too uncertain for them to book a trip while 58% were researching costs more carefully," said Ms Mansergh.
"But in more positive news, two-thirds of overseas consumers said their overseas holiday is important to them and they'll continue to prioritise it, so that's the space in which we want to play," she added.
Ms Mansergh said the US has been a very important market for Ireland with the highest visitor spend and Great Britain has the highest visitor volume market.
"We want to look beyond those markets as well as keeping them good and strong. So in diversifying our our focus will be investing more in mainland Europe this year," she said.
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"Canada has been a growth market for us, and we're also looking for the long term to more nascent markets like China and India, I'm just back from Shanghai and Beijing where we were building partnerships," she added.
The all-island marketing company said it will undertake an extensive and targeted programme of promotional activity across 15 key overseas markets.
It also said it is creating more opportunities for local Island of Ireland businesses to travel overseas with Tourism Ireland and promote themselves.
There are also some emerging or refocused themes such as culinary tourism, activity tourism and giving people year-round reasons to visit across regions.
"We'll be reaching overseas visitors directly with influential advertising, broadcast TV and streaming productions, publicity, digital, social and AI activity, to win year-round tourism, with benefits across regions," said Ms Mansergh.
