TOURISM:MINISTER FOR Tourism Leo Varadkar and his minister of state Michael Ring have started a promotional blitz in Europe to boost visitor numbers.
Mr Varadkar travelled to Frankfurt this week to meet German tour operators and air carriers with direct services to Ireland. During his visit, the minister restated the Government’s commitment to tourism as a driver of recovery and appealed to the industry to respond to tax and other concessions for the sector in recent initiatives. With its economy booming, the number of tourists coming to Ireland from Germany rose 11 per cent in the first quarter of the year, according to the CSO.
Unlike in Ireland and Britain, where online booking dominates the market, the Germany tourist market is still controlled by a small number of tour operators and travel agents.
Mr Varadkar attributed the reversal of the decline seen in recent years to a re-engagement by Tourism Ireland with the travel trade in advertising in Germany since 2009. Germany is the world’s largest outbound travel market with 76 million travellers each year and over half of the population takes at least one holiday outside of Germany each year. Almost 380,000 German tourists came to Ireland in 2010.
Restoring the British market to growth remains the Government’s main priority this year, said Mr Varadkar. However, although Britain is our largest market for tourists, with almost 2.8 million visitors last year, the average spend of tourists from Germany is greater. Mr Varadkar’s trip to Frankfurt follows a similar visit to the UK in the spring while Mr Ring has gone to New York to beat the drum for Irish tourism and plans to visit Paris in September.
Meanwhile, only one in 10 Germans has visited or is likely to visit Ireland though over half rate it favourably as a holiday destination, new research suggests. Amarách Research carried out a survey of attitudes of Germans to Ireland since the economic crisis started. Germany is Ireland’s third biggest tourism market after the UK and US – attracting 380,000 visitors in 2010. Tourism Ireland spent €2.5m on TV campaigns in Germany to attract visitors.