DUBLIN TOURISM aims to attract an extra one million visitors to the city by 2015, with the help of a new cultural tourism strategy launched yesterday.
Frank Magee, Dublin Tourism chief executive, said it was an ambitious but achievable target for the capital. The city tourism sector was expected to be the fastest-growing part of tourism over the next three to five years, he said.
Some 5.62 million visitors came to Dublin last year, 2.3 million of which were holiday-makers.
Mr Magee described this year’s summer season as “disappointing”, with visitor numbers to Dublin down five per cent on last year. July figures were down 8.5 per cent on the same period last year.
He said the new cultural tourism strategy was “the silver bullet that can turn the tourism tide”.
The strategy focuses on encouraging museums, theatres and other cultural institutions to work with hotels and the tourism trade to promote events.
It aims to provide better information to tourists with improved on-street signage and an online calendar of cultural events, and downloadable maps of museums, theatres and galleries. Some of these initiatives are already under way.
Dublin Tourism held a networking seminar yesterday to bring cultural institutions and the tourism trade together.
Paul Carty, chairman of its cultural tourism committee said this was the first time all the cultural attractions in Dublin had been brought together in this way.
“If you take the GAA Museum or the Guinness Storehouse or the Jameson Distillery or the National Concert Hall, they don’t actually know definitively what each other do,” he said.
He said cultural attractions should be providing event information to Dublin Tourism at least a year in advance.
