Bureau puts best foot forward in ‘sister city’

IN his letter headlined ‘Chinese visitors run into Irish wall’ (March 6), Gerry Mullins appears to have a complete misunderstanding of Cork Marketing Partnership (CMP) and World Expo 2010.

CMP is not spending any money promoting tourism at World Expo. The tourism focus of CMP is devoted specifically to business tourism, which is undertaken by its Cork Convention Bureau project.

The national responsibility for tourism marketing rests with Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland, with which CMP works closely.

Cork Convention Bureau seeks to attract business conferences, meetings and incentive/rewards travel.

The target market predominantly is in selected European countries. Independent research shows that in the period 2007-’09 the bureau attracted business valued at €20m to the Cork region.

World Expo 2010 in Shanghai is the latest in the world fairs’ series which are held every 10 years and focus on the economic, cultural and tourism aspects of the participating countries.

Expo 2010 is expected to have 200 countries participating, with up to 100 million visitors attending .

As on previous World Expo occasions there will be a national pavilion organised by the Government.

Visitors to Expo will come from across the globe. This will afford participating countries an opportunity to showcase themselves to a widely diverse range of interests through a programme of exhibitions, meetings and cultural events.

As Cork is a “sister city” of Shanghai, CMP sought to engage with the Department of the Taoiseach at an early stage to ensure there would be an appropriate representation of Cork in the Irish pavilion. As a result, CMP established a co-ordinating group representative of municipal, business, cultural, educational and tourism interests to ensure Cork’s representation was delivered with appropriate exhibitions, performances, images, footage and technology.

Michael Geary

Chairman

Cork Marketing Partnership

Albert Quay

Cork