Waterford Crystal chief executive Mr John Foley says he is optimistic about the rest of the tourism season despite the sharp drop in visitors from the US.
Overall business at the company's visitor centre in Waterford, one of the top five fee-paying tourism attractions in the State, has been down 20 per cent on last year. Visits by US tourists are down by a quarter.
June, however, showed signs of improvement, says Mr Foley, and indications are that the second half of the year will be much better. "We had 347,000 people through the facility last year and if I had to predict the outcome for this year, I would expect it to be somewhere between 310,000 and 315,000, a drop of 13 or 14 per cent."
For Waterford Crystal, the implications of a drop in visitors from the US extend far beyond the loss of business at the company's visitor centre. Sales to tourists, most of them from North America, account for 60 per cent of the €57 million worth of Waterford crystal sold in the Republic each year.
The drop in US visitors, however, has not brought a corresponding drop in sales, says Mr Foley.
"I'm not going to talk about the figures but we have worked very hard to ensure we get a higher percentage of people buying our products, so the tourist numbers are not reflected in the sales figures."
He says the US tourism market remains unpredictable but there are good grounds for believing the next six months will be better than the last - and also an improvement on the same period last year.
"Last year things stopped pretty quickly after September 11th, so on that basis alone you could expect September and October to be better months this year."
