Clare Barrett (House of Waterford Crystal, left), with Gráinne Murphy (Tourism Ireland), and Jay Munro-Michell (ETOA - European Tour Operators Association), at the Flavours of Ireland 2015 event in London.
Forty Irish tourism enterprises – including House of Waterford Crystal and Waterford’s Museum of Treasures – travelled to London last week, to take part in Flavours of Ireland 2015.
Flavours is Tourism Ireland’s annual B2B tourism workshop, now in its 13th year, which saw more than 100 representatives of the top inbound tour operators based in Britain come together to do business with the various tourism organisations from Ireland.
Flavours of Ireland aims to grow our share of the huge worldwide travel market. Attended by representatives of top UK inbound tour operators like Euro Asia Travel, Miki Travel and JAC Travel, who are responsible for putting in place the arrangements for holidaymakers to Britain and the island of Ireland from all over the world.
This event was an excellent opportunity for the participating Irish tourism providers to highlight and sell their product to these important decision-makers and to encourage them to feature the island of Ireland in their future holiday programmes.
Said David Boyce of Tourism Ireland: “We’re delighted that so many Irish tourism organisations and so many of the leading UK inbound tour operators took the time to join us at our Flavours event again this year. We very much welcome the business and networking opportunities it presented.
“Our aim is to increase awareness of Waterford and Ireland among these hugely influential tour operators and to help Ireland and our tourism partners secure a greater share of the huge worldwide tourism market.”
Mr Boyce continued: “Figures issued by the CSO this week indicate that we are heading for a record year for Irish tourism in 2015, with more than 5.8 million people arriving during the January to August period – an increase of 12%, or an additional 633,500 overseas visitors, when compared to 2014.
“We are determined to ensure that tourism growth continues. We have a really extensive autumn campaign in full swing right now – aimed at boosting late-season travel to Ireland from around the globe.~”
