Eoghan O’Mara Walsh: Tourism faces new threats post-Covid

Public, political, and media assumptions that tourism is back and its problems are gone need to be dispelled.

Eoghan O’Mara Walsh, CEO of The Irish Tourist Industry Confederation (ITIC). Picture: Maxwell

Covid-19 cost Irish tourism a whopping €12bn over a two-year period as international visitors — the mainstay of the industry — were prevented from coming to our shores.

The 20,000 businesses within Ireland’s tourism and hospitality industry had been kept alive thanks to Government financial assistance and staycation demand from the domestic market.