Northern Ireland hospitality faces struggles as tourists return

As the sun came out this week, the first tourists of the spring season could be spotted in Belfast city centre. Opposite the City Hall the smart new Bedford Hotel is nearing completion. But amid the optimism new official figures pointed to some of the struggles for the hospitality industry across Northern Ireland. They suggest that over the course of 2025 the number of jobs in the sector fell by 2,000, from around 57,000 to 55,000. That decline of 3.5% is in contrast to the economy as a whole where the number of jobs was up by 1.3% last year. Most of the fall in hospitality jobs appears to have happened in the final quarter of the year, traditionally one of the busiest times. An important piece of context is that hospitality jobs had reached an all-time high in the summer of 2025, before that decline later in the year. But for Colin Neill of Hospitality Ulster, the data is proof of the industry's warnings about the cumulative impact of rising costs. Across the UK those concerns have focused on employment costs, particularly the increase in employers' National Insurance contributions which was imposed in April 2025. "The level of taxation that we have arrived at has made it impossib