Summary of ideas submitted in the Tourism category…

• Provide information on the average daily spend of a tourists in Ireland
• Provide low priced flights for tourists coming into the country.
• Provide more camping and caravanning parks.
• Pump money into sporting events to raise good will.
• Put more thought into design of hotels, bars and restaurants and encourage free refills for tea and coffee.
• Rebuild and reopen old rail routes such as the Galway to Clifden line.
• Redevelop the canal system in Dublin as a tourism attraction.
• Reduce minimum wage for hotels and restaurants.
• Reducing excise on alcohol that is sold in licensed premises while increasing excise on alcohol sold in an off licence
• Re-establish a steam train rail network in the southwest.
• Remove the current practice of charging per person rates in hotels and charge per room instead as is standard in the majority of the world’s major tourism destinations.
• Remove the large taxes on pints.
• Revaluate current taxi fare structures as part of a campaign to change the perception that Ireland is expensive.
• Revisit the tourism initiatives used in the 1980 and early 1990s.
• Reward visiting motorists with a rebate on fuel tax.
• Run markets, fairs, and festivals every weekend throughout the coming year.
• Set up a register of people willing to have overseas visitors to stay in their own home for one night providing accommodation and breakfast only for the visitors in return for a voucher for a meal.
• Simple meals rather than expensive restaurant meals
• Skype Gaeilge lessons
• St. Patrick’s Day Parade - Create sectioned off areas where people are limited in the amount of time that they can spent with good view of the parade. Also create an underground link from one side of O’Connell St to the other to improve traffic flow.
• Start and encourage comedy courses.
• Start ferry services between Dun Laoghaire and Howth, and Dublin city to Wicklow, Wexford etc.
• Suspend taxes on flights and hotel rooms for a 2 year period
• Take over all unoccupied housing from developers that must be owned now by the banks and give the housing to local authorities to house people into a rental system with option to, buy like the local councils did years ago.
• Tap into the increased ethnic diversity in Ireland by holding an ‘Irish Olympics’, international song contest and international ‘Foodfest.’
• Target O’Connell Street at tourists.
• The College Green interchange and tourist attraction to celebrate 2016.
• The Government should give a 60%refund on the tourists’ accommodation costs.
• The Government should host an Irish bid to host the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
• Themed tourist holidays.
• There is a huge biking culture in Europe and America, and we should tap into this by creating bike trails all over Ireland.
• There is a huge interest in healthy leisure activities both in Ireland and abroad. Invest in walking and hiking and cycling routes and trails
• To attract more business build ’satellite’ individual buildings on the hotel site where space permits. These could provide informal office space, meeting rooms even living facilities with the added attraction of full use of the hotel facilities.
• Tourism strategy focused on our strengths.
• Tourist euro rate for tourists.