The recent report published by the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC) has been described as “a worrying snapshot” of where the industry currently stands by Fine Gael T.D for Cavan/Monaghan Seymour Crawford. “It supports Fine Gael’s call for the abolition of the departure tax without further delay,” he stated.

According to Deputy Crawford, the report provides a detailed overview of the serious challenges facing the tourism industry today. “It reveals the stark reality that there has been virtually no growth in holiday visits from our biggest market, Britain, in ten years. This is a shocking indictment of this Government’s failure to prioritise tourism as a valuable industry.”

Deputy Crawford added that as recently as last week he read a magazine from Germany showing how 43.7million of their people spend their holidays overseas. “Unfortunately Ireland was not mentioned as one of the potential holiday destinations for them. Clearly we have a major job to do and if we were to get only 1% of this market it would revolutionise the industry in this country.” The Fine Gael T.D also said that the ITIC report shows that a reliance on the domestic market cannot deliver the volume to compensate for a continued downturn in demand from overseas. “It reveals that there will be 1.5million fewer visitors in 2010 compared to three years ago, there was a 20% drop in bed nights last year, holiday visits from Britain have not increased in ten years, Ireland’s dependency on repeat visitors (just 34% first time visitors in 2009) and of course the Government’s failure to tackle competitiveness issues. The other more serious problem is that airline capacity is back to 2006 levels. The one issue that brought people into this country was the capacity of Aer Lingus and Ryanair etc and when people were getting cheap flights we certainly had an opportunity to fill bed nights.”

The report also supports Fine Gael’s proposal to introduce a common visa arrangement between Ireland and the UK to capture the potential of emerging markets. “For instance there will be a number of Chinese and others travelling to London for the Olympic Games and while they may cross to Northern Ireland it would be difficult for them to visit south of the border or the border area if they cannot get a common visa,” added Deputy Crawford.

The Fine Gael T.D believes that instead of aiding the industry, Fianna Fail and especially Minister Hanafin seem to be doing everything that harms it. “The Tourism Renewal Group has said that the daft travel tax should be abolished yet Fianna Fail and the Greens continue to levy it. Tourism is one of our single biggest industries and the potential in the border region is enormous. There is still funding available through Interreg and other structures which should be utilised to ensure that we maximise the potential available. Government can no longer sit idly by”, concluded Deputy Crawford.