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Survey Name

Household Travel Survey

Survey purpose and legal basis

The purpose of the Household Travel Survey (HTS) is to measure domestic and outbound travel patterns of Irish residents which involve overnight stays and same-day visits. The HTS is a postal survey of private households which is carried out every month under Section 24 of the Statistics Act, 1993. Approximately 4,600 households are randomly selected each month from the CSO’s household register. The CSO’s household register is based on data from different public sector databases acquired by the CSO under the Statistics Act, 1993.

Participation in the survey is voluntary. It is conducted to comply with the requirements of Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the collection of tourism statistics. 

Who uses the results?

The results from the HTS are published on a quarterly basis on the CSO website. The principal outputs are the number of trips taken, number of nights spent away from home and total expenditure by Irish residents on domestic and outbound travel. The data is used by national and international tourism agencies, Eurostat, Government Departments and other organisations.

Is your personal data confidential and how long will the data be retained?

Yes. All information supplied to the CSO is treated as strictly confidential. The Statistics Act, 1993 sets stringent confidentiality standards. Information collected may be used only for statistical purposes, and no details related to an identifiable person or household may be divulged to any other Government Department or body.

Our results are only ever made available in aggregate form and we make sure that it is impossible for individuals or households to be identified.  The data will be securely held for four calendar quarters from the date of the most recent published release and can only be used for statistical purposes.  Anonymised (non-identifiable) trip level data is sent to Eurostat on an annual basis.

The sources and categories of your personal data, where the data has not been collected directly from you:

N/A

For further information on this survey, your Data Protection rights and how your data is used please contact:

James Mahon, Tourism and Travel Section, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E.  Tel +353 (21) 4535463 or E-mail tourism@cso.ie

Data Protection Information:

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights:

  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission. Contact details: Office of the Data Protection Commission, 21 Fitzwilliam Square South, Dublin 2, D02 RD28, Ireland.
  • The right to request access, rectification, erasure, restriction or to object to the processing of your personal data.

However, because your data is processed for statistical purposes these rights may be limited in accordance with Article 89 of the GDPR. This is due to the fact that the exercise of any of these rights may render impossible, or seriously impair, the achievement of the statistical processing and such restriction maybe necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.

Central Statistics Office Data Protection Officer Contact Details: