This article is from page 16 of the 2008-12-02 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
THE Clare Tourism Council has pre- dicted that the county’s tourism in- dustry will receive a major boost in 2009 – driven mostly by the return of American visitors.
The council, which held its annual conference in Ennistymon last week, believes that a combination of factors including Ryanair entering the low- cost transatlantic market, will boost American visitor number on 2009.
According to chairperson of Clare Tourism Council, Flan Garvey, the election of Barack Obama and the rising value of the dollar will en- courage American’s to travel.
“We have also had hints that Michael O’Leary and company will be getting into the transatlantic mar- ket out of Shannon and doing it ina low cost model compared to what is there at the moment,” he said.
‘The pre-clearance issue is vital as a part of this, we will be the first air- port in Europe which has this and the onus is on us to focus on what is right and not what is wrong.
“We need to get those flight in from Europe, through Shannon, and then off to North America again. We will have this for a full year ahead of Dublin Airport and if we can all work together we can really make this happen. This is a golden op- portunity which we have never had before.”
The conference was addressed by a number of high profile speakers in-
cluding Alan Clarke, CEO Northern Irish Tourist Board, Paul O’Toole CEO of Failte Ireland and Martin Moroney, head of the Shannon Air- port Authority.
“Everybody acknowledges that we are going through a rough time at the minute but this is a time for reflec- tion and planning for a future which is going to be better,’ continued Cllr Garvey (FF).
‘People are pretty optimistic about next year. They are cuts to certain ar-
eas this year but we are well placed, even with Open Skies, to capacity of markets that we have already estab- lished.
“The Clare Tourist Council has been here since 1961 and in that time we have done countless promotions in Milwaukee and London and all over the world. We have a share of the market now that we would not have if we hadn’t been out there over the years.”
Others to attend the conference
included the Ambassador from the south African country of Lesotho, who was the first representative from an African country to address the Clare Tourist Forum. Also present were US _ television personality, Stephanie Abrams and a delegation from Ennistymon’s twinned towns in Greece and Italy.