Tourism Ireland buys domain name
The all-Ireland tourism body said that the domain name would pay for its €495,000 price tag in less than four years due to the savings in costs on search engine optimisation engineering.
The Irish Times acquired Ireland.com in 1997 for a low four-figure dollar sum.
Tourism Ireland chief executive Niall Gibbons said that the domain name was the natural home for the tourism body.
“The domain name Ireland.com is a natural fit for the work we do to promote the island of Ireland overseas and we are very pleased to be acquiring it from Irish Times. There are obvious benefits for tourism, including ease of recognition and sheer memorability which will allow us to achieve greater ‘stand-out’ in the markets and will bring increased efficiencies in terms of promotion and search engine optimisation,” he said.
Websites are now one of the most important resources for attracting visitors to the country. Tourism Ireland sites attracted almost 12 million unique visitors from overseas in 2011.
The sites are a vital platform for Tourism Ireland to communicate with customers around the globe, showcasing the superb tourism product on offer and the many things to see and do around Ireland.
Irish Times managing director Liam Kavanagh said they were happy to be selling the URL to tourism Ireland.
