Ring launches tourism drive

The Minister of State for Tourism and Sport, Michael Ring, joined Tourism Ireland and 70 tourism enterprises from across the island of Ireland at World Travel Market (WTM) in London last week, heralding the beginning of the promotional drive overseas for the 2015 season.

 

Now in its 35th year, World Travel Market is the largest B2B event in the global travel and tourism calendar, with about 50,000 travel industry professionals from around the world and 3,000 influential international media in attendance.

 

According to the organisers of WTM, more than £2.2 billion (approximately €2.8 billion) worth of business was transacted at the event in 2013. This year, some 70 Irish tourism enterprises – including hotels, visitor attractions, ferry companies, coach companies, incoming tour operators, hostels and activity providers – exhibited at the Tourism Ireland stand.

 

Over four days, they engaged in thousands of meetings with British and international tour operators as they negotiated and exchange vital contracts for 2015.

 

Minister Ring said: 'I am highly impressed with the level of business done by the tourism industry at this year’s World Travel Market, particularly at the Ireland stand, where I saw tourism enterprises from all parts of the country conducting hundreds of business meetings and doing a great job of selling tourism to the global travel trade.

 

'The government believes strongly in the importance of tourism as a vehicle for Irish economic recovery and we are committed to supporting the tourism industry’s efforts to increase Ireland’s export earnings from overseas tourism.'

 

Latest CSO figures for overseas visitors to Ireland are very strong, confirming growth of 9.3 per cent in overseas visitors to Ireland for the January to September period – more than 500,000 additional visitors when compared with the same nine-month period in 2013.