Friday, April 5, 2019
Tourism Ireland has scooped the top prize for ‘best foreign tourist office website’ at the French hospitality industry’s ‘Les Travel d’Or’ awards.
Beating off stiff competition from four other destination websites (including Mauritius, Tunisia, Thailand and the Maldives), the Tourism Ireland site, was voted number one for its winning appeal and content by some 221,000 internet users from around France and by a panel of web and travel industry experts.
This is the fifth time that Tourism Ireland has won a Travel d’Or award – considered the ‘Oscars’ of the e-tourism industry in France, rewarding excellence in the digital sphere (the organisation also won in 2011, 2012 and 2015 and 2017).
Speaking about the win, Monica MacLaverty, Tourism Ireland’s Manager Southern Europe, said: “We are very proud that our Ireland.com website has picked up this prestigious award. Given the huge part that the internet plays in peoples’ research, planning and choice of holiday destination, it is essential that our site is as good as, or better than, those of our competitors. Winning this award for a fifth time highlights that we are up there with the best and I am confident that our strong online presence will continue to motivate more French people to choose the island of Ireland as a holiday destination.”
France is one of the top four markets for tourism to the island of Ireland and 2018 was another record-breaking year for French visitor numbers to Ireland.
Monica MacLaverty continued: “2018 was the best year ever for tourism from France to Ireland, when we welcomed about 564,800 French arrivals. For 2019, we are rolling out an extensive programme of promotional activity, to keep the momentum going and build on that growth.”
Ireland.com is available in 11 different language versions for more than 29 individual markets around the world. In 2018, Ireland.com attracted 20.3 million visitors.
Tags: Tourism Ireland
