New website for Big Apple visitors

A new travel website has been set up to help almost 700,000 annual Irish visitors to the Big Apple.

visitnewyork.ie is a one-stop shop to book flights, hotels, sightseeing tours and restaurants as well as theatre, football or music events.

Some 694,000 Irish people visited New York in 2008 – an increase of 9,000 on the previous year.

Internet giant Google also claims Irish web surfers make about 100 million travel request searches for ’New York’ each year.

Visitnewyork.ie also offers shopping discount vouchers of up to 20% in famous stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdales.

The website is run by Dublin entrepreneurs Alex Kirwan and Ronan Fitzsimons who claim the service will take the hassle out of travel planning.

“People will always be looking to go on holidays and if cash is tight there will be some great deals you can book on our site to get a cheap deal on everything needed for your trip,” Mr Kirwan said.

Mr Fitzsimons added: “Our new website is aiming to take advantage of Irish people’s love of travel and we will be keeping money in Ireland as our business is based here.”