Canadian Travel Professionals Check Out Offaly

A group of top Canadian tour operators and travel agents – all specialists in group tours and responsible for making the travel arrangements for a diverse range of large groups – have been visiting Ireland this week. They were here as guests of Tourism Ireland and Fáilte Ireland.

The Canadians attended a ‘Canadian Expo’ B2B workshop in Galway, where they met with Irish tourism enterprises to negotiate for their 2017 programmes. They also undertook an action-packed fact-finding visit – taking in Dublin, Ireland’s Ancient East, the Wild Atlantic Way and Northern Ireland. One of the highlights of their time here was a guided tour of Clonmacnoise.

Canadian tour operators and travel agents with Kate Smith, Tourism Ireland (left), during their fact-finding visit to Ireland

Dana Welch, Tourism Ireland’s Manager in Canada, said: “Tourism Ireland was delighted to invite these top Canadian tour operators and travel agents to visit the island of Ireland, to see and experience some of our many great attractions and to encourage them to include Ireland in their programmes for 2017.”

2016 looks set to be another good year for Irish tourism from Canada and the United States, with the latest CSO figures showing almost 1.4 million visitors to Ireland from North America during the January to September period this year – an increase of +15.4% when compared to the same nine-month period in 2015.