This article is from page 16 of the 2005-09-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
THE local tourism industry has been told to cut its prices after being accused of not doing enough to promote new routes into Shannon Airport.
Making the charge, Chief Executive of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary said, “If there is anything we would complain about at Shannon, it is a per- ceived lack of support for Shannon Airport from the local tourism interests.”
In Shannon to announce Ryanair’s 17th route from the airport to Malaga, Mr O’Leary said, “It is time for all tourism interests, who have done lots of bleeding, whinging and complaining over the last 10 or 20 years, to get off their arses and start supporting Shannon Airport.”
Mr O’Leary’s call to the tourism industry was echoed by Director of Shannon Airport, Martin Moroney who said, “The tourist sector should wake up and get out there and organise them- selves right across the West of Ireland and capi- talise on Ryanair and other carriers using Shan-
non as a gateway.”
Mr O’Leary added, “Shannon will almost dou- ble in the space of two years. No Irish airport has ever done that before, no airport will ever do it again. We need, through this first difficult winter, the support of all the tourism industry, not to have the tourism industry here looking for handouts.
“It 1s time that the tourism industry down here stopped f**king sitting there with the cap out say- ing ‘we need the Government to fund this or we want a subsidy for that’. In the next three months, we are spending €1 million advertising Shannon in 15 different countries and giving away 200,000 seats. We know that we can deliver the numbers. Now we’ve got to give people a reason to come here in the Winter.”
Mr O’Leary added, “Shannon and Ryanair are delivering passengers. We need the hoteliers, res- taurants, pubs and everybody else to do their bit, drop the prices for the Winter and send the visi- tors home all happy.
“The West of Ireland is fine in the summer. The sun is shining and all the rest of it. The West
in the middle of winter, when it 1s cold, wet and dark, you really have got to persuade people to come here.
“This winter, we have all recognised, 1s going to be the hardest time for us. We are trying to op- erate 17 routes into an airport with a surrounding population base of less than 500,000 people.”
Mr O’Leary expressed confidence that Rya- nair will reach its two million passengers out of Shannon in three years instead of the five origi- nally agreed with the Shannon Airport Authority (SAA).
The Ryanair Chief Executive revealed that the establishment of the new route to Malaga stemmed from a phone call from SAA chairman, Pat Shanahan, after the collapse of EUjet who op- erated the route.
‘The new route, which wasn’t planned by us, is a by-product of how good the partnership is between Shannon Airport and Ryanair. Shannon will call us up and say ‘can you try to do some- thing’ and we’ll try to do something for Shannon if we can at all.”