Despite Ireland having its best year ever for overseas tourism with 10.5 million visitors, Tourism Ireland chief executive Niall Gibbons has warned that there may be "sustainability issues" in Dublin and at big attractions, restricting growth to around one per cent in 2017, reports The Irish Times.
With this year's visitors contributing more than €5.4 billion in revenue to the economy, up by 10 per cent from 2015, the likes of Belfast's Titanic museum, which welcomed three million visitors over the past four years, Guinness Storehouse (1.6 million visitors per year) and the Cliffs of Moher (1.2 million visitors per year), are likely to face sustainability issues.
Gibbons said that the marketing strategy for 2017 is to attract high-spending visitors from the USA and Australia, who tend to stay longer and spend more, as well as making a special effort to attract Chinese tourists to help replace a probable Brexit-related decrease in British visitors.
Minister of State for Tourism Patrick O'Donovan commented that the government had asked local authorities to create tourism development plans with a list of specific targets to help regional areas improve their tourism numbers.
