Search Results for 'Niall Gibbons'

Aer Lingus has stepped into the gap left by Bmibaby to provide a service from Knock to Birmingham.

Myriad iconic attractions around the world are to ‘go green’ this year to mark St Patrick’s Day and to kick off Tourism Ireland’s major first half promotional drive to develop overseas tourism.

North Connemara is among the landscape highlights featured in a new ad campaign aimed at boosting the country’s tourism industry.

Commenting on CSO figures issued this week on overseas visitor numbers to Ireland for the period January-October 2011, Niall Gibbons, chief executive of Tourism Ireland, stated: “These figures show that visitor numbers for the year to date are now +7.4 per cent ahead of the same 10-month period last year. However, the economic turmoil of recent months has brought increased uncertainty, affecting business and consumer confidence, and in turn, international travel. Given the scale of the challenges facing the global economy right now, travel and tourism look likely to face a fairly cautious passage into 2012.”

Four new Ryanair routes from Ireland West Airport Knock to Barcelona (Girona), Frankfurt (Hahn), Milan (Bergamo), and Paris (Beauvais) will commence from April 2012 — the introduction of which is a “game changer” for tourism in the west of Ireland.

The tourism drive in the US continues, as top American travel writers came to Ireland last week, to take part in the renowned Travel Classics writers’ conference. As part of the conference, hosted by Tourism Ireland, the journalists enjoyed a fact-finding visit around Ireland, which included some of the wonderful sights and attractions of counties Westmeath, Offaly, and Laois. During their visit, the group enjoyed a cruise on the River Shannon from Athlone, stopping off at Clonmacnoise in Offaly. They also visited the Celtic Roots Studio at Ballinahown and spent the night at the newly-opened Ballyfin hotel in Laois.

A new tourism initiative, promoting great value deals for holidays in the west of Ireland, reached some one million newspaper readers around Great Britain at the weekend.

A new tourism initiative, promoting great value deals for holidays in Ireland’s Lakelands region, will reach over one million newspaper readers around Great Britain this weekend.