Summary of ideas submitted in the Tourism category…

• Create a website where people can send digital invitations to family/friends abroad to come visit Ireland.
• Create activity-based parks for tourism.
• Create additional Public Holidays, preferably on dates that coincide with U.K. or U.S. holidays. These new holidays should be themed to appeal to emigrants and held in months that don’t have a Public Holiday.
• Create an educational programme to teach American High School students about Ireland.
• Create an Irish archaeology trail for tourists.
• Create cheap hotel breaks for families with babies and small children.
• Create historical activity holidays.
• Create incentives for tourists to holiday in low visitor areas.
• Create jobs to clean up the landscape.
• Create more themed holidays.
• Create more visitor centres/attractions
• Develop a photography-based tourism service
• Develop a tourist programme specifically aimed at farmers from abroad or those with an interest in outdoor/green/agricultural issues.
• Develop walking routes and promote walking holidays.
• Drop VAT on restaurants to 5.5% to stimulate jobs in that sector.
• Dublin Port has the potential to be transformed into a major European leisure and tourism zone.
• Each region in Ireland should have a dedicated, easy to navigate website.
• Eliminate the Sunday/weekend premium on staff wages in the hotel/tourism industries.
• Eliminate VAT and Excise duties on beers and wines
• Employ Irish people in the tourism industry.
• Employ more indigenous Irish people in hotels - need to promote Irish culture.
• Employ unemployed people to promote and organise home exchanges.
• Encourage a competitive market for retail and catering services
• Encourage American students to come to Ireland for their Spring breaks.
• Encourage and make it easy for Irish people to ad the weblink to www.discoverireland.com in the footnote of their e-mails
• Encourage backpackers to holiday in Ireland.
• Encourage managers to have a business ethos of retaining staff, creating awareness around our business with minimal expense, having a bit of a laugh.
• Encourage people to holiday at home in Ireland
• Encourage tourism by making 2010 a year of celebrations as it will be 2000 years since the Romans invaded, whom we repelled.
• Encourage tourists to come on cheap, long stay holidays: use some of the large stock of vacant housing units as tourist accommodation and get unemployed people to manage it.
• Encouraging citizens to make visitors feel more welcome in Ireland.
• Establish a network of state-run hotels.
• Establish regional tourism enhancement agencies.
• Evaluate undeveloped archaeological sites as potential tourist attractions.
• Every Irish citizen should send an email to friends/family living abroad inviting them to come and visit Ireland.