The early train from Dublin Connolly to Belfast Grand Central was a busy one last Monday morning.

Bleary-eyed commuters heading north were joined by scores of American tourists fresh from the NFL clash in Croke Park the day before.

Still wearing their allegiances on their chest, fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings boarded the now hourly Enterprise Service. Many of them scanned over leaflets recommending visits to Titanic Belfast, the Giant’s Causeway and the Game of Thrones studio tour.

The NFL games, like the College Football classic in August, brought thousands of US visitors to the capital, says Eoghan O’Mara Walsh of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC).

“The college football game brought a big dividend to Irish tourism – and not just to Dublin. Those visitors tend to stay for seven days and tour the regions,” he says.

“Americans spend about three times what the British do and the North American market is doing very well right now”.

O’Mara Walsh’s outlook is broadly upbeat in what he describes as a “challenging year”.

[ Hopes Irish tourism will win big from US College Football Classic in Dublin’s Aviva StadiumOpens in new window ]

The tourism industry contends that the official visitor numbers from earlier in the year did not reflect the reality on the ground. While the Central Statistics Office (CSO) seemed to point to a big drop – industry voices were insistent that things were not nearly as bad as the official figures suggested.

Nonetheless, the overall Irish tourism situation is “flat at best”.

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