Il capo del turismo afferma che l’Irlanda non dovrebbe fare affidamento troppo sui turisti statunitensi tra le turbolenze

Yes, let’s rely on the Russians instead.

Why bother mentioning Americans? Who are they hoping to rely on?

Europeans? Who want to visit Ireland for the geography and history, only to find a hotel is €300 a night, after being forced to fly into Dublin and organise extortionate car hires to the west coast?

Id love to see tourist demographics cos tbf we’re not as good a tourist spot as mainland Europe.

Americans love Ireland cos of historical ties and many probably do have lineage here. Yes they can be cringe but I’ve never met an American tourist who didn’t respect Ireland. They can be unintentionally rude or ignorant but they’re coming here cos they love it. Every American I’ve met on holiday is delighted to finally visit and bend over backwards to buy local

Sure tourism should just pray other places want to visit, just hoping they ignore the insane prices, no public transport and dying nightlife

Edit: do they want to attract Asian, South American or African tourism? Cos frankly we’ve got some cool history and world class sights, but is it better than mainland Europe with longer history, better prices, better amenities and better attractions?

Tourism chief should actually have just not bothered saying this.

We can’t rely on Europeans specifically given how fucking expensive it is to come here by comparison.

In fairness, they’ll probably come here for a bit of normality

I don’t think your average American tourist is going to stop coming to Ireland over politics – it just doesn’t add up. Most of the Americans who come here are great craic, genuinely curious, easygoing people. They take a bit of an unfair hammering on some of the forums. Most of them are just very excited to be here and enthusiastic.

The real risk is if the U.S. economy gets knocked sideways by chaos. If things get rough over there, and probably here too, people are going to avoid spending money and holidays abroad are always first to go. We should generally be broadening our appeal— look more seriously at European, Asian and other markets.

At the same time, we badly need to sharpen the tourism product itself. Feels like the foot’s been off the pedal for years now. Tourism’s been coasting along, probably because the rest of the economy was flying and no one was paying it much attention.

But prices here are through the roof. Outside of the ultra-luxury stuff, like golf resorts and five-star hideaways, we’re pricing ourselves out of the game. And if we’re not offering proper value for money, people will just go elsewhere. The cities also need to up their game and offer something worth going to. Dublin in particular has been getting deservedly poor reviews — it really isn’t even trying.

Well, maybes if we had flights to Brazil South Africa and Australia, and more flights to Asia we wouldn’t need to rely on American visitors