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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 25 Jun 2003

Vol. 569 No. 4

Written Answers. - Tourism Industry.

Jack Wall

Question:

203 Mr. Wall asked the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism if his attention has been drawn to the concerns of hotel arrears in regard to a significant drop in bookings in regard to conferences, sporting events, and so on; his plans to address this problem; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18034/03]

The only hard data available on the season to date are the CSO tourism statistics for the first quarter of 2003 which were released earlier this month and on which I commented at length in response to a question from Deputy Wall on 12 June.

These figures show that Ireland is more or less holding its own in a difficult international market this year. While the figures recorded a slight decrease in overall visitor numbers of 0.3% compared with the same period last year, foreign revenue earnings from tourism increased by almost 10%. The indications from the tourism agencies and industry generally is that 2003 is proving to be yet another testing year for tourism. The Iraqi war, the spread of SARS and a continuing sluggishness in the economies of our main source markets have all combined to produce a difficult international marketing environment.

With an increased Exchequer investment in tourism marketing this year, Tourism Ireland and Fáilte Ireland have been able to implement a strong and sustained campaign of marketing activities in our key source markets. The marketing programmes for Britain, continental Europe and the US have all been boosted in recent weeks to ensure that Ireland is ideally positioned to capitalise on the upturn in consumer confidence in the wake of the Iraqi conflict. For my part, I have lent my support to these efforts in the field with visits to Germany, Britain and France earlier this year and an upcoming week long visit to the east and west coasts of the US at the end of this month.

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