Fáilte Ireland have unveiled a new ad promoting domestic tourism in the west as part of their "Embrace the Wild Atlantic Way of Life" campaign, which was conceived to encourage Irish people to explore all that the west coast has to offer in the way of sights, sports and other recreational activities.
According to the official Fáilte Ireland website, the ad will air throughout May on RTE, TV3, Channel 4 and a number of Sky channels before being repeated in September and October. It is also being accompanied by advertising outdoors, online and on radio.
Fáilte Ireland CEO Paul Kelly stated that "The domestic market provides a bed-rock for many tourism businesses and sustains activity in the sector throughout the year. Our home holiday marketing activity is especially geared to generate business in the 'shoulder seasons' each side of summer to allow tourism operators to trade longer, which is good for jobs and also important in terms of developing and maintaining a strong product on the ground for all tourists, whether domestic or international."
Expenditure on domestic holidays was up 5% on previous years in 2016 at €1.12 billion. Total nights spent on domestic leisure trips last year was estimated at just over 15 million, which represented a 2% increase on 2015. Visitors who stayed in hotel accommodation accounted for over 3.6 million domestic trips in 2016.
