City has potential for €10 million conventions windfall

Convention business in the city could increase by at least threefold – potentially delivering a €10m annual tourism windfall – with the setting up of a dedicated and staffed bureau, it was claimed this week at a meeting of Galway City Council.

The Meet in Galway group – made up of various tourism interest groups – say that the establishment of the Convention Bureau could help to bring in business to the city and county worth in the region of €10m per annum.

The group’s presentation to the City Council – made by Darragh O’Connor and Rose Finn of the Meet in Galway group – said that the city and county needed to compete with other places like Cork, which had convention bureaus in place.

Rose Finn said that convention business delivered a high return in terms of the spend of delegates, averaging out at €1,500 per person, three times that of the normal individual tourist outlay.

She also said that conventions delivered business at off-peak times of the year, while the average stay tended to be of five-day duration. It was a real ‘inward investment opportunity’, she said.

Darragh O’Connor told city councillors that they needed local authority funding to make the convention bureau a sustainable model into the future but said that the tourism return would be substantial.

He said that Galway – despite its many attractions and advantages for conferences and conventions – was losing business to places like Cork because of the fact that they didn’t have a full-time convention bureau.

Convention business, he said, was worth about €10m each year to Cork and there was no reason why Galway couldn’t match that figure if they had a convention bureau in place.

For the rest of this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune.
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