DAA, the airport’s operator, released new end-of-year data today, showing that the airport’s cafes served more than 2.5 million cups of tea and coffee in 2024, which equates to a cup of tea or coffee being poured every 12 seconds.
The bars in Dublin Airport also sold more than 1.5 million pints of Guinness this year.
Meanwhile, the top-selling crisp in the airport was Ireland’s favourite Tayto, with more than 500,000 packets sold over the past 12 months.
Toblerone was passengers’ favourite chocolate, with 72 tonnes sold in the airport – the equivalent of 72 family cars.
Today’s News in 90 Seconds – December 30th
This year, almost 19,000 items were handed into the airport’s lost and found department, operated by airport police, with more than half of the items returned to the owner.
Luggage was the most common item left behind in both terminals and surrounding campuses, with more than 2,300 bags handed in.
Over 1,000 mobile phones were also handed in while 750 sets of keys and 550 laptops were recovered.
Other items include passport or national identity cards, sunglasses, driver’s licences, reading glasses and toys.
Media relations manager at Dublin Airport Graeme McQueen said 550 wedding and engagement rings were also handed in this year.
“More than 100 of those rings remain unclaimed, including many engagement rings. Did they ever get married? I guess we’ll never know,” he said.
“As always, the year saw some very random items being left behind and the award for most peculiar this year goes to the passenger who left a golf bag with a full set of clubs inside sitting on the departures road.
“We thought they’d possibly just had a bad round and decided to ditch the game, but alas they swung back to the airport a few days later to collect them,” he added.
All recovered items are listed on the Dublin Airport website and, if not claimed after six months, they are auctioned off, with all proceeds going to charity.
The airport police team were also first responders to more than 3,000 medical incidents during the year.
Mr McQueen added it has been a “busy year” at Dublin Airport, with several improvements to the food and drinks outlets in both terminals.
“We’re delighted to see our passenger satisfaction ratings at an all-time high following the rollout of a string of improvements in the terminals over the past 12 months,” he said.
“Passengers are loving the new food and drink outlets that we’ve added such as Supermac’s and Fruitality in Terminal 2 and the bigger and better Butler’s Cafe in Terminal 1.
“The new Grafton Barber outlet in T1 is also proving a hit with passengers and staff, while new innovations like our Drop & Go parking service are really popular too.
“The great news for passengers is that we’ve even more improvements coming soon in both terminals to make their experience even better in 2025 – and we’ll be announcing details of those very soon, including more great new food and drink outlets.”
More than 171 days this year have seen over 100,000 passengers moving through Dublin Airport, which will turn 85 years old in January. When it opened in 1940, it was built to accommodate 100,000 passengers per year.
DAA confirmed they will release the final end-of-year passenger numbers in January.
