Ireland fourth highest dream holiday destination. Let’s get to number one! – Noone

Fine Gael Dublin Senator, Catherine Noone, has welcomed the results of a recent survey of 8,000 readers of travel magazine Virtuoso Life which ranks Ireland as fourth in a list of dream holiday destinations, coming in only behind only Australia, New Zealand and Italy.

“To be ranked fourth best in the world and second best in Europe is quite a feat and yet another key indicator that, when it comes to tourism, a great many things are in Ireland’s favour in 2013. We need to keep pushing to make sure that this remains the case in 2014.

“I am truly ecstatic that Ireland is the number four dream destination of the readers of Virtuoso and I know that our Minister for Transport, Sport and Tourism, Leo Varadkar TD, as well as Tourism Ireland, has left no stone unturned as we bid to bring American visitors over here and show them a great time.

“Indeed, the multiple cost-effective strategies that have been deployed, such as The Gathering, have resulted in the CSO showing out strongest ever first-half performance from North America, despite its challenging economic climate. There has been a 20% increase in tourism figures since this Government came to power. In this year alone there has been an increase of more than 15% in visitors from North America.

“With the addition of new airline routes from the US to Ireland, this figure may well continue to grow, but now is not the time to be complacent and we need to continue to show why Ireland is deserving of this great ranking as fourth best dream holiday destination, but also continue to push up the table and reach the number one spot. I have no doubt that we can achieve that.”