Tourist season looking good as it gets off to a great start

The summer season kicked off brilliantly in the city with good weather and a healthy footfall for the third annual Food Festival, which attracted up to an estimated 60,000 people.

Tour operators have reported strong bookings for June, July and August and since the Cúirt International Festival of Literature two weeks ago, there has been a steady number of domestic and overseas visitors to the city.

Last week, the second week of the Easter school holidays saw a huge influx of visitors to the city, and Fáilte Ireland are already very pleased with their outlook for 2014.

Michael Fitzsimmons of Fáilte Ireland Galway said: “Galway for Easter was very positive and there’s still a stready stream of visitors around, both domestic and overseas.

“Group bookings for the summer ahead is up on last year, with July and August looking very strong. The Food festival was a huge boost to the city helped by the weather of course,” he said.

Fáilte Ireland take readings from visitors numbers to the city and region’s top tourist ‘hot spots’ such as Dun Aengus on the Aran Islands, the Galway City Museum where visitor numbers for last year of 160,000 had doubled on the previous year and Kylemore Abbey.

They also conduct Visitor Attitude Surveys at airports and four out of ten tourists reported their experience of Ireland had far exceeded their expectations while six out of ten had said that Ireland had met their expectations.

The reasons given by tourists for liking their visit were the warmth of the Irish, the scenery, its history and culture, weather better than expected and food quality. And over half of them (56%) said they would definitely return in the next few years.

Mr Fitzsimmons said that bookings for accommodation in the city and surrounds were well up on previous years and that next year’s tourism predictions were “very optimistic.”

Tourists in general found value for money and food and drink costs competitive.

Most of the overseas tourists surveyed on leaving Irish airports said they had listened to live Irish music in a pub, visited a coastal town and tasted a Guinness, visited a food or craft market and took part in a city tour – all activities available to visitors to Galway.