Sir, - I refer to the article by David Andrews, TD, "Tourism investment vital to future prosperity" (February 5th) in the course of which he recognises the Government's neglect of so-called budget and youth tourism.
Bord Failte's new and exclusive "high yield" target is the tourist who stays in the most expensive hotels and castles around the country and is deemed to be high-spending solely on the basis of how much it costs to lay down his or her head at night. There are no reliable statistics to tell us how much that tourist has left to spend in the related economy, be it shopping, golfing, dining out, and so forth.
lam reminded of the American woman who called in to the Tourist Information Office in Galway to enquire about staying in Dromoland Castle, but who declined to pay the £1 which the receptionist requested to make a telephone booking. Presumably the tourist spent a good deal more in petrol driving to Dromoland where, if Bord Failte's promotional focus was successful, she found that there was no room at the inn.
The universities in Ireland North and South, which serve the so-called budget and youth tourist, provide almost 7,000 beds for. more than three months during the peak summer period. At Maynooth College, language students accounted last year for more than 50 per cent of the bed nights sold. More than 500 students, staying over a six-week period, each with about £500 to spend in addition to what they pay the college, the Language School, various tourist attractions in the Kildare and Dublin region, and Aer Lingus, injected a huge amount of money into the local economy, patronising the supermarkets, newsagents, clothes shops, pitch-and-putt and golf courses, equestrian centres and so forth.
Meanwhile, the local hostelries thrive with hundreds of conference delegates repairing of an evening to wet their whistles. The same so-called budget and youth tourists, on their way in to spend big bucks on moma and papa in the usual haunts on Nassau Street's tourists' half-mile, probably had to squeeze past the window-shopping high-spenders who didn't have enough change to venture inside. - Yours, etc.,
Conference Centre, St Patrick's College, Maynooth.