{"id":186531,"date":"2025-11-18T05:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T05:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/186531\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T05:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T05:11:09","slug":"tourism-strategy-will-aim-to-turn-ireland-into-a-foodie-holiday-destination-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/186531\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism strategy will aim to turn Ireland into a \u2018foodie\u2019 holiday destination \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tourism<\/a> strategy with a major focus on turning Ireland into a \u201cfoodie\u201d destination and extending the tourist season from St Brigid\u2019s weekend to Halloween is to be announced next month.<\/p>\n

The wider plan includes a first \u201cnational culinary tourism strategy\u201d which would run on an all-island basis and involve the development of food trails and weeklong food-based holidays in key destinations.<\/p>\n

Tourism has moved to the Enterprise and Trade portfolio under this Government and Minister Peter Burke\u2019s<\/a> plan aims to deliver benefits for some 46,000 small and medium enterprises in the sector.<\/p>\n

Food businesses will be developed with trails or themes synonymous with certain regional hotspots such as distillery tours in the Midlands and coastal food trails based on seafood restaurants. Specific destination marketing campaigns will be developed and there will be promotion of \u201cunique food and beverage offerings\u201d.<\/p>\n

The strategy will also involve the reopening of a number of tourism marketing offices including in Tokyo, Japan<\/a>. Tourism Ireland and F\u00e1ilte Ireland will be set targets under the near-completed strategy. <\/p>\n

Countries like France, Italy and Spain are major culinary destinations but food is rarely cited as the primary reason for travelling to Ireland. <\/p>\n

Scenery remains the top attraction for tourists coming to Ireland, but food and drink account for some 34 per cent of total visitor spend, according to tourism bodies. <\/p>\n

The policy comes as F\u00e1ilte Ireland\u2019s<\/a> latest tourism barometer showed that 43 per cent of tourism businesses reported a fall in income this summer. <\/p>\n

However, Mr Burke said \u201clast year was a bumper year for tourism and it is a big challenge to replicate that\u201d. He noted the Dublin Airport<\/a> passenger cap had reduced the number of seats available by 12 per cent over the summer.<\/p>\n

It will be different over the winter, he said, with the lifting of the cap and a corresponding 9 per cent rise in seat availability with the potential for \u201cwell over one million\u201d visitors.<\/p>\n

Speaking in the D\u00e1il<\/a> last week, Mr Burke told Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> Cavan-Monaghan TD Cathy Bennett the new strategy would \u201cshow how we are going to grow revenue sustainably and grow the number of visitors coming in, which is critically important\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe will also outline career pathways as well as looking at extending the season from St Brigid\u2019s Day right out to Hallowe\u2019en. There is a huge amount of opportunity in those areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Burke told Ms Bennett the \u201cvery exciting culinary strategy\u201d would be done on an all-island basis by \u201cworking in co-operation with our colleagues in Northern Ireland<\/a>\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe plan will show how we are going to grow revenue sustainably and grow the number of visitors coming in, which is critically important.\u201d <\/p>\n

It will also focus on giving certainty to hotels to extend the season, following significant investment this year in Hallowe\u2019en tourism offerings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tourism strategy with a major focus on turning Ireland into a \u201cfoodie\u201d destination and extending the tourist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,4767,61384,26,18,4774,64254,19,17,386,4772,47,5986],"class_list":{"0":"post-186531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-dail-eireann","10":"tag-department-of-enterprise-trade-and-employment","11":"tag-dublin-airport","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-failte-ireland","14":"tag-food-month","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-japan","18":"tag-peter-burke","19":"tag-sinn-fein","20":"tag-tourism"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115568986346933292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}