Joseph 'Joe' Walsh 1931-1995:JOSEPH "Joe" Walsh, travel agent and tour operator, was born in Bangor, Co Down, and educated at St Patrick's College, Armagh. On leaving school he worked for the Ulster Transport Authority and later moved to London, where he worked for the firm Thomas Cook and saw the potential for providing holidaymakers with a complete, affordable package.
He later moved to Dublin, where he worked for two travel agents before founding his own business, Joe Walsh Tours Ltd, in 1961 with the aim of providing the affordable package he had envisaged. Walsh emphasised that he was not in the business of profiteering, but he believed that by charging a modest price, clients would return to the firm year after year. This philosophy transformed the Irish travel market by making foreign holidays accessible to large numbers of people who previously would have holidayed within Ireland. Air fares and having to travel through London had previously acted as a barrier to lower- and middle-income earners travelling from Ireland to locations such as Rome, Lourdes, and the Balearic Islands. Pioneering new ideas within the industry, Walsh was the first Irish operator to charter his own planes and so reduce the overall price of the package holiday. In its first year, Joe Walsh Tours provided holidays to almost 2,000 clients who travelled to Lourdes or to locations in Italy and Spain.
Walsh quickly spotted an opening and cornered the market in providing package holidays to the religious pilgrimage destinations of Rome and Lourdes. The tourism links that he created between Rome and Ireland were so successful that in 1966 he was granted a private audience with Pope Paul VI in recognition of his achievements. His success was further recognised in 1968 when he was made a cavaliere of the Italian Republic. In 1972 he was elected president of the Irish Travel Agents’ Association. By 1983 he was chairman and managing director of Ireland’s biggest tour operator.
The package holiday industry in Ireland went through many ups and downs throughout the latter part of the 1980s and the early 1990s, but Walsh successfully resisted the various pressures. In 1988 he turned down a multi-million pound bid for his company by a British tour operator. The same operator subsequently set up in Ireland and lured several senior staff away from Joe Walsh Tours. Despite this setback, his company was the only Irish-owned tour operator when he died, and it was voted Ireland’s number one tour operator in 1993 and 1994. He died on January 1, 1995 at St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, and is buried at Shanganagh cemetery.
He was married to Margaret Sheerin; they had three sons, who carried on the business after his death, and two daughters. The year before he died, Business Finance estimated his fortune in the region of £3.5 million.
From the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography. See dib.ie for more details
