Valerie Gamble, who runs the highly rated Honeysuckle Cottage B&B outside Ballymoney, Co Antrim, began to notice the impact of new UK visa rules on her business shortly after Christmas.

Since January, short-term holiday visitors to the UK from countries outside of the European Union have needed to apply online for an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) before travelling there.

From this week, however, the ETA applies to all EU countries except the Republic of Ireland, which is covered by the long-standing Common Travel Area agreement. The authorisation will cost £16 per head for other EU countries after April 9th.

For Northern Ireland, the changes raise unique problems, since nearly 70 per cent of all of its tourists do not land at UK airports, but arrive in Dublin and travel across the Border without checks.

Much of this traffic amounts to a couple of days out of a longer holiday to visit Northern Ireland’s most popular tourist attractions, such as the Titanic Centre in Belfast, the Giant’s Causeway in Co Antrim or Derry’s walls.

“I started getting calls after Christmas from French and Germans who have stayed with me for years,” she says. “They are not guests, they’re friends. In the last four, or five weeks the numbers of calls have increased.”

The difficulty for Gamble and many others in the local tourist trade is that many visitors who travel to Northern Ireland after landing in Dublin may not realise until it is too late that an ETA is required.

In addition, a significant percentage of French and German tourists travel not with passports, but with national identification cards. A passport is needed to apply for an ETA application. Only about four in 10 Germans have one.

Even Germans with passports have issues with the ETA, with many complaining of problems when they have tried to pay with debit cards. In addition, the ETA app only comes in the English language.

Already, the ETA rules have affected group tour travel from the United States or so-called incentive trips for staff, where delegates have nothing to do with the arrangements.

“It’s all dealt with by their host. They don’t do anything,” says Alva Pearson-Downey of the Inbound Travel Operators Association. “So when you bring in two nights in Belfast or two nights in Derry as part of an all-Ireland programme, this is the only one time where the delegate is asked to do something.”

Minister for the Economy Dr Caoimhe Archibald warns that new visa rules could cut the numbers of tourists who travel on to Northern Ireland from the Republic. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA

To simplify matters, companies organising bus tours, incentive trips for employees and so on have begun to cut out the Northern Ireland leg of Irish trips, rather than deal with ETA applications, which have to be done individually by a traveller.

The Northern Ireland Tourism Alliance has been lobbying the Home Office in London for several years, seeking an exemption for short-term travellers who arrive from the Republic.

Acknowledging the UK government’s need to strengthen border security, the alliance warned this week that “the unintended consequences of the ETA scheme on cross-Border visitors to Northern Ireland is now becoming starkly apparent”.

The reliance by many Europeans on national ID cards rather than passports hugely complicates the issue since the UK authorities have refused since 2021 to accept them as valid forms of identity, and shows no sign of changing their minds.

So far, Northern Irish tourism is down 40 per cent on last year. The alliance’s chief executive, Joanne Stuart, says: “We have seen a decrease in daily trips. Again, some of this is quite anecdotal, but more information is being gathered.”

Some of the fall in Northern Ireland’s early 2025 tourist numbers could be explained by the drop that has taken place in those coming to the Republic, she accepts, but some of it is clearly down to the early effects of the new ETA rules.

“We had a French family group coming for five days in May, but they cancelled because a large part of the group travel exclusively on EU ID cards. They would have needed to get a passport for everyone to get an ETA, so they decided not to come.

“We’re going to have a lot of that, where three out of four have a passport, but one doesn’t so nobody comes,” says Stuart.

There is some disagreement within the tourism industry about how best to deal with the problem.

“It’s here. We didn’t want it, but we have to deal with it. For people who haven’t traditionally travelled on passports it is a problem. We have to address that by assuring them that they’re going to get a warm welcome.

Janice Gault of the Northern Ireland Hotels Federation said it is a “simple form to fill out” that people will “hopefully” get used to “much in the same way as we have got used to getting Estas to get into the US”.

Throughout, the Northern Executive has sought changes from London, though it has had little effect. There has been one concession where the Home Office accepted that foreigners who are legally resident in the Republic can travel into Northern Ireland without an ETA.

Minister for the Economy Caoimhe Archibald says the changes will have a “considerable” impact. “We’re already seeing signs. Tour operators are beginning to see tours and trips cancelled and the North being removed from itineraries. That is going to put people off.”

Last month Archibald said tour operators had raised concerns with her at a tourism fair in Berlin.

Dr Joanne Stuart, the chief executive of Northern Ireland's Tourism Alliance, says the impact of the new visa rules is already being felt. Photograph: Tom Honan

She will discuss the issue with the Irish Government’s Minister for Enterprise and Tourism, Peter Burke, this month.

Meanwhile, there have been worries that tourists landing in Dublin who travel into Northern Ireland without an ETA, because they fail to realise they need one or choose to ignore the rules, would not be covered by insurance.

“I wouldn’t be advocating that people take a risk with that,” says Archibald. “People will want to know that they are covered.”

However, Michael Curtin of Insurance Ireland downplays these fears. “Nothing changes. Full cover would apply when you travel out to the UK whether that be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Channel Islands. And, similarly, if you travel onwards to Europe.”

The UK visa rules are a UK government requirement and not an insurance obligation, he says. The same would apply to health insurance if it were taken out by a traveller in their home country, he says.

Looking to the summer, Valerie Gamble believes a 10th of Honeysuckle Cottage’s business is at risk. “It’s really and truly awful. Very few tourists who come here land in Belfast,” she says.

“They all go to Dublin and then come up north. This new ETA is going to put the kibosh on things.”

There will be no actual ETA checks in Northern Ireland this year. “So why bother with all of this?” she says.