National tourism development authority Fáilte Ireland has committed its largest-ever budget of €16 million to promote tourism in the Ireland West region over the coming year.
Chief executive Shaun Quinn said the industry was reasonably optimistic about its prospects for the coming year, with virtually all sectors expecting as good a year as in 2005 from both domestic and overseas visitors.
He was speaking yesterday at a meeting in Galway where Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland (the overseas tourism marketing agency) and Ireland West Tourism outlined their business plans for the coming year to operators in the West region.
Mr Quinn said Fáilte Ireland would continue to focus on developing all aspects of tourism in the Ireland West region, noting that this was particularly important as trends such as shorter breaks and shorter booking times continued to bite in rural areas.
Recognising the importance of the home holidays at regional level, Mr Quinn said Fáilte Ireland would be investing up to €4 million to sustain the recent remarkable growth in the home market.
Fáilte Ireland will also provide additional funding to Tourism Ireland for overseas marketing of the region during the coming year.
Fáilte Ireland has decided to establish 10 return-to-work programmes in the West region and to set up a temporary training centre in Galway to recruit more local people into the sector.
