Here comes the sun
Overseas visits have plummeted by about 20% since 2008 and the package holidays sold this year are likely to be around a third of the million-plus that flew off the shelves at the peak of the boom.
Despite the cutbacks, however, a keen interest in travel remains. We still love reading about travel, be it armchair adventures or fly-and-flop holidays on the beach, and the fact that we have less money to spend only means we think more carefully about the trips we can make.
So where will be hot in 2012? Where should your hard-earned holiday funds be spent? Here’s our selection of the top 10 destinations for the year ahead, from old favourites to new arrivals, exotic adventures and surprise (not to mention surprisingly affordable) packages.
It may take over four hours to get there, but that hasn’t deterred Irish travellers from wholeheartedly embracing Turkey as a package holiday hotspot.
Guaranteed sunshine, great beaches, lively Aegean Coast resorts like Kusadasi and Bodrum — allied to the fact that you’ll spend a lot less money than in Mediterranean destinations like Spain and Portugal — have all contributed to its success. Cork-based Wings Abroad is introducing a new resort in Altinkum this year too.
Details: Wings Abroad (wingsabroad.ie) has three-star self-catering packages from €359 for seven days. Thomas Cook (thomascook.ie) has a four-star week in Bitex from €499 in May.
The brightest Northern Lights in a decade, Reykjavik’s wicked nightlife, cultural heritage that stretches from the sagas to Sigur Ros, and a volcanic landscape strewn with geysers and glaciers… just some of the reasons to visit Iceland this spring. Once the poster child of the global financial crisis (not to mention the volcanic ash crisis), the country is finally on a roll, with tourists getting some 50% more for their money than they did in 2007 and Lonely Planet voting it the top country to visit in 2012. President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson has even been serving visitors pancakes and jam…
Details: Wallace Travel (wtg.ie) has three-night packages in April from €499pp plus tax.
This January, Emirates began flying direct from Dublin to Dubai. With Etihad already flying to Abu Dhabi, there has never been such access to the Arabian Gulf, and trips in both directions are expected to boom in 2012.
Ferrari World and the world’s tallest building (Burj Al-Khalifa, which you can spot Tom Cruise dangling off in the latest Mission Impossible) are just the start of the bling-tastic attractions in the area.
The flights also open up over 200 onwards connections to South Africa, South East Asia and Australia, creating a whole new hub for Irish long-haul travellers.
Details: TravelMood (travelmood.ie) has five nights at the 3-star Golden Sands Apartments in Dubai from €769pp, for travel in April. See also the special offers section on emirates.ie.
Up to several weeks ago, few of us had even heard of Poznan or Gdansk. That all changed when Ireland qualified for Euro 2012, and now soccer fans all over the country find themselves ramping up on the logistics of reaching Poland in June. Abbey Travel, the FAI’s official agent, has day trips from €519pp, or another option is to fly to Berlin or Warsaw and either rent a camper or take a 3½ hour connecting train from there to Poznan. An Irish Fan Village is also in the works for Lake Malta, where fans will be able to camp just a 10 minute walk from Poznan’s city centre.
Details: fai.ie; abbeytravel.ie; facebook.com/irishfanvillage.
The MTV Europe Awards, the rebooting of Belfast from Troubles to tourist hub, the brilliant M1 motorway — all have brought Northern Ireland onto the holiday radar in recent years. In 2012, however, the province will step up another gear.
With Portrush set to host the Irish Open, the clipper ships coming to Derry, a new visitor centre opening at the Giants’ Causeway and a brand new, £90m/€110m Titanic Belfast experience opening on the waterfront, Northern Ireland’s time has come.
Details: Find special offers at discovernorthernireland.com/offers. Three nights in an apartment at the Malone Lodge Hotel are available from £225 (sleeping six), for example.
Verona and Stockholm are new Aer Lingus routes from Dublin in March, and Ryanair has plans to fly from Cork to Pisa and Palma, but it’s hard to see past London as the No1 city break for 2012. Why? Because it’s close, it’s served by the widest range of direct flights from Ireland, because the Olympics and Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee are going to keep it in the headlines, and because Warner Brothers Studio’s new ‘Making of Harry Potter’ tour is opening in spring.
Details: visitlondon.com; wbsstudiotour.co.uk. Ebookers.ie has two nights at the 4-star Millennium Hotel in Knightsbridge, plus flights with BMI, from €243pp in early March.
Vietnam is tipped as the new Thailand and Burma Campaign UK has given its seal of approval to limited visits to the least-visited enclave of South East Asia, but India looks like being the sleeper hit of 2012. Particularly interesting is the increase in luxury trips — Insight Vacations has just launched its inaugural India & Nepal programme, and the Travel Department’s Taj & Tigers tour offers 13 nights in May including five-star accommodation in Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Udaipur, from €1,779pp plus tax.
Details: insightvacations.com; thetraveldepartment.ie.
Yes, we’ll always love New York. But an astonishing 50,000 Irish visitors are said to have travelled to Las Vegas last year — and the lure of Sin City looks like growing even stronger in 2012. You don’t have to be Sinead O’Connor to enjoy it, either.
A new Mob Museum opens in February, the Titanic Artefacts exhibition continues at the Luxor, Shania Twain is in residency at the Colosseum, and the helicopter trips over the Grand Canyon aren’t bad either.
Details: Sunway (sunway.ie) has four nights in Vegas, departing March 1st from €639pp.
One of the new additions to Aer Lingus’s summer schedule is a flight from Cork to Brussels, leaving three times weekly from March 26. Though it rarely appears without the letters ‘E’ and ‘U’ trailing after it, the Belgian capital has a lot more to offer than Eurocrats and sprouts.
Surprises include the Art Nouveau architecture, great shopping and most of all, yummy food. 2012 is going to be ‘Brusselicious’, we’re told, with the entire year hailed as a gastronomic festival.
Details: Lastminute.com has two nights at the Husa President Park Hotel from €367pp, based on travel over a weekend in early April (and indirect flights with KLM).
Spain has been Ireland’s number one sun holiday destination since Noah was a boy, and it’s going to remain so for the foreseeable future.
By now, we’re comfortable with the culture, there’s a great choice of packages, we like the food, it’s relatively cheap, and possibilities go way past the coastline — to the Canary Islands, Majorca, cities like Seville and Barcelona, and the increasingly popular Camino. Expect business as usual in 2012, particularly for Irish who own holiday homes there.
Details: LowCostHolidays.ie has seven nights on the Costa Brava for a family of four in June, €1,353 all-inclusive.
* NB: All prices correct going to press, but subject to availability.
MENTION staycations, and two potential spanners spring to mind.
The first is our notoriously unpredictable weather (as in, which type of rain we will get).
The second is value for money.
Let’s be honest. Short of building a gigantic retractable dome over the entire island, there’s little we can do about the first. The trick is to get out there and enjoy yourself regardless.
Having rainy day plans (galleries, museums, mountain-biking, surfing etc) won’t hurt either.
The second — value for money — is slowly but surely improving.
The day-to-day costs of holidaying in Ireland may still be higher than they are in Spain and Portugal, but home holidays skip the airfares, baggage fees and car hire, and the 9% VAT rate, together with an increasing range of special offers and set menus from hotels and restaurants, at least go to show that an effort is being made.
Here are five staycation destinations to watch in 2012.
Galway isn’t just the best festival town in Ireland, it’s also got great pubs, a top-notch coastal setting, an ever-improving restaurant scene, and it works perfectly as a staging post for Connemara. The Volvo Ocean Race returns to the city from June 30 to July 8 too.
“Everything good about Ireland can be found in Co Cork,” trumpets the new Lonely Planet guide. After years of West Cork hogging the limelight, expect the focus to shift east as Cobh embarks on a year-long programme commemorating the sinking of the Titanic, 100 years ago. Blue Flag beaches, the River Blackwater, Fota Wildlife Park and Ballymaloe are other reasons to head east.
Clare is Ireland’s all-rounder, a county that not only boasts Blue Flag beaches, surf schools, Aran Island daytrips and world-class links golf, but is home to the Burren National Park too. Steven Spielberg has holidayed in Ballyvaughan, and Ennis is one of Ireland’s best-kept shopping secrets.
Kilkenny can’t put a foot wrong at the moment. Described as “unmissable” in the new Lonely Planet Guide, its mosey-friendly medieval core is buffered by buzzy restaurants, hopping pubs, and a super selection of food, craft and walking trails. It’s just an hour from the Copper Coast of Co Waterford too.
The quiet kid of Ireland’s South East is due a break. Constantly outshone by Waterford, Wexford and Kilkenny, could 2012 be the year we finally wake up to the charms of the Glen of Aherlow, the Suir Valley, Clonmel, Cahir and the medieval fascination that is Fethard? A new Butler Trail linking Ormonde Castle, the Main Guard and Cahir Castle could just make it so.
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