This article is from page 2 of the 2007-07-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
UP TO 190,000 bednights and 25,000 car rental days will be lost as a result of Open Skies and there will be 40,000 fewer US visitors to the Shannon region, a startling new industry report has predicted.
The report, featured on the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC) website, 1s based on flight figures and current information from tourism industry players, many of whom are moving their interests to Dublin Airport.
Based on recorded visitor behav- 1our, an increase in the number of
US visitors flying into Dublin won’t make up for the Shannon losses as Americans who fly in through Shan- non stay longer, spend more time outside Dublin and are more likely to hire a car to get around.
Shannon will see a reduction from 59 flights per week in each direction last winter to 34 for the coming win- ter – a 40 per cent decrease in maxi- mum available seat capacity.
‘The net impact of a possible shift of between 25 per cent and 30 per cent of US holiday traffic from Shannon to Dublin in the short term, without any appreciable increase in overall capacity on direct routes to Ireland
in 2008, could see an estimated net loss of between 150,000 and 190,000 bednights in the country, a reduction of up to 25,000 car rental days and at least 25,000 fewer Americans visit- ing in Cork/Kerry and up to 40,000 fewer Americans visiting the Shan- non region. The Galway west region could see at least a drop of 15,000 US holiday visitors’, the report states. The ITIC study predicts a “redistri- bution of mobile services – car rental fleets and coaches from Shannon to Dublin, with added congestion issues in Dublin together with higher oper- ating costs for most”
“These changes have potentially
very significant implications for the tourism industry, particularly busi- nesses based in the west’, it states.
ITIC is calling “as a matter of ur- gency” for the implementation of “a tourism and economic plan for the region, to include funds for the promotion of the west of Ireland in the US market so as to overcome the short-term impacts of open skies.”
It also argues that a special budget allocation to Tourism Ireland for each of three years (2008-2010) should be directed at heightening the motiva- tion to visit the western seaboard and to at least sustain the level of services to Shannon Airport.