This article is from page 83 of the 2008-09-16 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 83 JPG
FEARS are growing in the Clare tourism sector that the overseas mar- keting budget, promised as part of the Open Skies agreement, will face the chop in this years early budget.
“We would like to make sure that the overseas marketing budgeting for tourism is not cut back and maybe we can even add to it. We have been Shown before that at times of crisis, if we spend the money on advertis- ing oversees we do feel the bounce from it,’ said Michael Vaughan of the Irish Hotel Federation.
“We need to insure that the Shan- non Airport Catchment Area Mar- keting fund, which was part and par- cel of the Open Skies agreement, be maintained.
“We are due €5 million in a mar- keting budget for four years, we have only seen one year of this and the
government has not as yet said that they will be delivering on the re- mainder.
The Irish Hotel Federation has also called on workers to “share the pain” when approaching wage talks.
‘We have a concern about the ris- ing cost of service – spending gener- ally should be maintained. We need to insure that major infrastructure projects like the N18 corridor from Galway to Ennis are not held up,’ continued Mr Vaughan.
‘We need to have a very modest ap- proach to wages at the moment. Our industry has undergone serious wage inflation in recent times.
‘We don’t want to see people disad- vantaged but we do feel that wage in- creases would be at a very minimum. A pay freeze would be something that we would hope to achieve but it is anegotiation situation and we will have to see what happens.”