BBC News NI economics and business editor
That was not a full recovery compared to the last pre-pandemic year in 2019 when 3.95m beds were sold.Hotels faced severe restrictions during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 as the hospitality sector was forced to close for months at a time.The official figures suggest that 45% of hotel guests were local residents, 30% were from Great Britain, 13% from the Republic of Ireland and the remainder from the rest of the world.
Other figures suggest that Titanic Belfast was the top paid-for visitor attraction in 2022, attracting 611,000 guests. The second most popular paid attraction was the Giant's Causeway, with 422,000 visitors, which was also far below the pre-pandemic level of more than one million visitors in 2017 and 2018.The hotel will continue to operate under the Hilton brand.