Tourism websites traffic rises

TOURISM Ireland’s international websites had a record number of hits in quarter one of this year, despite the fall-off in real visitors to our shores.

New figures show that the number of hits to the 41 websites rose to 2.89 million during the first three months of 2009, despite a 24% increase in the organisation’s web activity over the same period in 2008.

This followed on from last year’s record for www.discoverireland.com, when the sites attracted 10.3 million visits, which in itself represented a 54% increase on 2007.

Tourism Ireland’s head of marketing, Brian Harte said the strong boost in figures reflects policy within the group to expand that aspect of promoting Ireland as a tourism/holiday destination on line.

The group has been increasing its digital marketing activity across the world and is putting a significant portion of its budget into this crucial area of marketing to ensure that Ireland is promoted to as many potential visitors as possible.

As a result, investment in this area has been growing steadily in recent years and “we now invest close to 25% of our marketing budget online”, he said.

“We are also continually enhancing the website to increase its effectiveness in marketing the island of Ireland as a premier holiday destination and as a platform to help industry partners” increase their own flow of business, he added.

“While the global economic downturn is impacting on Irish tourism this year, it is encouraging to know that interest in visiting the island of Ireland is still high,” he said.

He added that “discoverireland.com is up there with the best and we are confident that it will continue to inform, motivate and inspire potential visitors from around the world to choose the island of Ireland for their holidays”.

Discover Ireland puts information out there to potential holidaymakers around the world in a total of 19 different languages and which covers every continent.

Included in the site is a vast resource of information gleaned from a database of over 31,883 tourism products that include everything from accommodation, festivals, attractions and events.

According to Discover Ireland the site information is updated daily to ensure potential visitors are presented with a comprehensive view of what Ireland has on offer as a tourism destination.

That adds to the attraction for overseas tourists, said Mr Harte.

“Things to See and Do” was the most viewed section of the website over the period.