TOURISM FIGURES:THE FREE TRAVEL SCHEME should be extended to British and other EU citizens over 65 who visit Ireland, to help push up visitor numbers, according to the Irish Hotels Federation.
The IHF’s chief executive, John Power, said the change would help address the number of visitors from Britain, which has fallen by 16 per cent year on year, according to new research by the Central Statistics Office – the largest drop from any country.
“Irish Rail and Bus Éireann should be asked to extend the free-travel programme to people visiting from Britain and Europe,” Power said. The scheme currently applies to residents of the Republic and Northern Ireland. There are more than nine million people aged 66 and over in Britain and 80 million in the EU as a whole.
The IHF said the new figures were of enormous concern to the hotel industry. Hoteliers were badly hit by the drop in tourists, with a million fewer nights spent in Irish hotels between April and June alone.
Power said hotels were not too expensive to attract visitors. “Prices are down almost 17 per cent on last year, [and] packages and specials run by hotels mean that prices are down by around 25 per cent year on year.”
Fine Gael’s tourism spokeswoman, Olivia Mitchell, said: “Irish tourism is melting down, with hotels right at the forefront . . . All those in the industry hoped the summer would signal a turnaround in fortunes, but instead the summer season has proven to be a bust.”
A total of 3.3 million visitors came to Ireland in the first half of 2009. Mitchell called for the employment subsidy scheme to be extended to tourism.