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Dublin: 10 °C Wednesday 19 June, 2013

Tourism trade mission bids to attract Asia-Pacific visitors

Tourism Ireland will lead a delegation on a five-day ‘sales blitz’ as the government confirms a temporary visa waiver scheme.

Image: Julien Behal/PA Archive

TOURISM IRELAND is to lead a five-day tourism trade mission to the Asia-Pacific region beginning this weekend, capitalising on the government’s new visa waiver scheme announced yesterday.

The ‘sales blitz’ hopes to encourage tour operators from the Pacific region to include Irish destinations in future holiday programmes, hoping to build on yesterday’s announcement that the government would be relaxing visa requirements for tourists in the coming years.

The visa relaxation moves, which form part of the jobs initiative announced by Michael Noonan yesterday, will see Ireland waive its usual visa requirements for people who have already secured visas to travel to the UK until the end of 2013.

The Irish delegation is to travel to a business-to-business travel trade event, ‘Destination Britain & Ireland’, meeting trade representatives from India, China, Japan, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and New Zealand.

Tourism Ireland chief executive Niall Gibbons said the Asia-Pacific region offered “exciting possibilities for tourism to the island of Ireland in the medium-to-long term”, and pointed to international research indicating that outbound travel from the region would explode in the coming years.

Announcing the programme in the Dáil yesterday, Noonan said the scheme was particularly geared at attracting visitors who might be visiting Britain in 2012 to coincide with the Olympic Games in London.

Gibbons said the visits of Queen Elizabeth and President Obama next week would also help to raise Ireland’s profile as a potential tourist destination.

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Comments (13 Comments)

  • I actually didnt use the word racist at all Darren. Cant you read?

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  • You went to a lot of effort there Darren. Pity it couldn’t have been on something that wasnt a pile of xenophobic bullshit.

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    • Why thank you Dave!
      From you I consider that a compliment. Though I must admit I do prefer the label Nationalist or even Nazi for short. Racist is always a good one to roll out for silencing my opinion too don’t you think? And much easier for guys like you to spell! Besides it beats you having to carry around that dictionary all the time! Now run back and get your f*****g shinebox!

      Reply
  • And how have you deduced my intelligence by the way? I’d love to know your rationale for deciding that! First class honours degree here by the way, so wind it in, you bitter individual!

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  • Oh, and where in my post is the word “racist” exactly Darren? Perhaps you might like to borrow the dictionary I apparently have to carry around so that you can distinguish between racist and xenophobe. Your ranting is utterly bizarre! Trying to claim we had good food before Foreigners arrived? Do you actually know the esteem in which Irish “cuisine” is held abroad? It actually improved when a bit of foreign influence arrived to shake it up. And as for Irish “warmth”, its people like you who destroy any notion of it with your judgemental attitudes to anyone who isnt “western” as displayed in the post above, and even one on the Eurovision which you managed to turn into another bout of small mindedness. I have never encountered the “cold stare and slop” you seem to, but perhaps that’s because they perceive that I don’t hate them just because of where they are from!

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  • Not particularly, just enrolled for the MBA…sad that someone so intelligent can come out with such unbelievable bias!

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  • Exactly what kind of tourism is being encouraged here?
    Asylum Seeker Tourism? Social Welfare Tourism or Supply of Cheap Labour Tourism?
    Traitor employers and the like will love this one. Maybe its even on the sly advice of our EU/IMF colleagues: “solve the housing crisis with all those new ‘tourist’ families”, that will never leave!!
    Oh but by the way, who pays? You pay!
    “But increased population will kick start the economy and make us more competitive”, they say. And “with low birth rates and an aging population the Irish will be crying out for migrants in the future”, they tell our politicians in Brussels!
    So that’s why we’ve always had emigration here then?
    And in the future they’ll be less need for labour not more of it with the exponential leaps expected in technology AND they know this so its obvious we’re been taken for a ride here with this bull**** tourist visa crap. Our hotels/restaurants are already offputting enough for genuine tourists who are disappointed when they can’t find an Irish person but hey maybe I’m wrong and every town in Ireland should be saturated with foreigners to meet the EU/UN population density capacity which suggests Ireland can house approx 17.5 million. Thats 4.5mill Irish and 13 mill non Irish or ‘new Irish’ as is pc. Well the world population is expected to reach 10billion by the end of the century so I guess we’ll just have to swallow it or maybe that’s not the correct term since we’ll probably be starving. Roll on the Ghetto, the poverty and the famine. Thanks politicians for your amazing foresight, yet again!

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    • X 11/05/11 #

      Yea Darren, there is going to be waves of asylum seekers from Japan, UAE, Australia and New Zealand. Also it is a big conspiracy that China and India have been growing so fast and there is NO rich Chinese or Indian people and all those reports of Chinese buying luxury cars and sending their kids to $60,000 per year college in America are all false.

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    • China, India and S. Africa are main concerns. You Keep telling yourself that they are full of rich holiday makers there X man and that only they will come, lol!!
      Time will be the deciding factor and then where will you be? X’d that where but you’ll be happy enough because you’ll have made sure we are all X’d with you.
      Now X off back to Zz land!

      Reply
    • X 11/05/11 #

      I will be here in America

      “Chinese travelers spend more than counterparts from any other country — about $7,200 per person per trip, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.”

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  • Yeah X. Is that spent in China Town buying back their freedom from their sweat shop owner? By the way X, its nice how they have their China town area all to themselves where westerners can’t live. Equality is a lop sided reality isn’t it?

    Reply

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