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.