Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\nMr O’Mara Walsh said that, as an island nation, Ireland’s tourism sector is heavily dependent on visitors coming by air – and the conflict in Iran would impact that.<\/p>\n
Rising jet fuel costs – and fears around supply issues – will mean it is more expensive for people to fly to and from Ireland in the coming months.<\/p>\n
There is also a fear that volatility and fears around the global economy could prompt would-be visitors to travel less this year.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile one of the more direct impacts is the \u20ac450-500m worth of tourism revenue that traditionally comes from the Middle East, which is now in doubt.<\/p>\n
“The reduction in air capacity into the country is going to have a hit on tourism,” Mr O’Mara Walsh said.<\/p>\n
“We’re lucky in a way that we’re less exposed than other markets – Aer Lingus and Ryanair are the two big players for Ireland and even Aer Lingus’ announcement only affects about 2% of capacity,” he said.<\/p>\n
But it will impact the sector nonetheless, he added.<\/p>\n
At the start of the year, ITIC had predicted 5-7% tourism revenue growth this year – though that was predicated on a stable global economy. He said that the onset of war has made that target overly ambitious.<\/p>\n
“I think that figure is going to be lower,” Mr O’Mara Walsh said. “It’s still very difficult because we don’t know the situation in the Middle East – we don’t know if there’s going to be a settlement of the conflict sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n
“We’re rejigging the numbers as they go along,” he stated.<\/p>\n
One silver lining – or at least potential cushion for the sector – is that the uncertainty may also lead to Irish consumers staying home rather than travelling abroad, which will give a boost to the domestic tourism market.<\/p>\n
Mr O’Mara Walsh also said there was hope that Ireland could be seen by nervous travellers as a safe place to visit.<\/p>\n
“We’re an island on the western edge of Europe, we’re well away from the conflict zone,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The Middle East and even the likes of Turkey and so on isn’t going to be as popular for tourists so maybe Ireland is going to gain a little bit of business,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But I think those positives aren’t going to outweigh the negatives as a result of this conflict that’s going on at the moment,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is growing nervousness within the tourism industry that the war in Iran could impact the sector’s performance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-413753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}