The tourism industry is hurting badly and is now admitting as much. Normally, hoteliers and guest-house owners prefer to remain in the optimism business. Gloom and doom are alien to their nature. Two potent forces have combined to change this. The foot-and-mouth outbreak in parts of Europe, including a case in the Republic, caused US tourists to look elsewhere for their holidays. The second force is the downtown in the US economy, which has led many Americans to consider whether it is prudent to take a foreign holiday at all.
Coach tours, still the staple of our US business, tend to combine visits to Ireland and the UK. Few tours are based on one destination alone. The ongoing problem with foot-and-mouth in the UK has therefore had a continuing knock-on effect on tourism to Ireland. On this side of the Atlantic, the distinctions are clear enough. In the US, foot-and-mouth is seen as a problem common to both Ireland and Britain. The Irish Hotels' Federation has said business has fallen by as much as 20 per cent this year, and by as much as 30 per cent in parts of the south-west and west. No industry can easily sustain a decline on this scale. The government has responded with an increase in Bord Failte's marketing budget, aimed as reassuring overseas markets that an Irish holiday is safe, pleasurable and good value. The markets do not appear to be listening. Car ferry business is down from Britain. Both France and Germany, our two most important European markets, are sluggish. We now know that Aer Lingus will lose money in the current year, partly because of a poor showing on the North Atlantic.
This should be a wake-up call for the government and the Minister for Tourism, Dr McDaid. In the last few months, Bord Failte has lost a chairman, Mr Redmond O'Donoghue, and next month will see the departure of its chief executive, Mr John Dully. The promotion of island of Ireland is passing to a new north-south body. In itself, this is to be welcomed, but it creates a vacuum rendering the tourism industry rudderless at a time when it most needs direction.