Tourism Ireland has been voted the number two tourist board in Germany, by a jury of some 161 journalists – including editors of national and local newspapers, travel and special interest magazines, as well as freelance and online journalists.
For the 14th year in a row, the Tourism Ireland publicity team was named in the Top 10 among all tourist boards represented in Germany, in the annual TPR (Touristik PR) awards, in the ‘Verkehrsbüro des Jahres’ (tourist board of the year) category.
The criteria under which the tourist boards were evaluated for this award included: product knowledge, comprehensive replies to enquiries, organisational skills and creativity. Tourism Ireland was ranked second overall.
Zoë Redmond, Tourism Ireland’s manager Central Europe, said: “We are constantly looking at new and engaging ways of highlighting the island of Ireland to the media here in Germany – so we are particularly honoured to receive this award. A key element of our annual promotional programme involves working with German travel and lifestyle journalists and bloggers, to ensure they write or broadcast extensively about the island of Ireland as a holiday destination.”
Oliver Treptow and Judith von Rauchhaupt, both Tourism Ireland, with the award certificate for number two tourist board in Germany, March 2018
Tourism Ireland recently launched a new strategy to boost tourism from Germany, setting out challenging and ambitious targets which will see the island of Ireland welcome 800,000 German visitors per year by 2021, representing growth of 20pc; and will see revenue generated by holiday visitors rise by 27pc, to €375m per year.
Zoë Redmond added: “Germany is the third-largest market for tourism to the island of Ireland and in 2017 we welcomed around 660,000 German visitors. Tourism Ireland is rolling out an extensive programme of promotional activity again in 2018 – to keep the momentum going and build on that growth.”
