Irish Sea Manx Stopover

[integer]

The idea's not without merit. The fact that tourists already come here instead of Ireland shows just how wrong The Sultan of Shite is on a lot of his points....

[bluemonday]

Agreed it could have some mileage. Manshimajin why not contact the Tourism dept with your idea and see what happens?

[Lonan3]

I am not sure that it would work in practice as it will rely on there being a considerable amount of traffic between the UK & the IoM and between Ireland and the IoM.

 

The traffic is already there between the UK & the IoM but I am not sure about between Ireland & the IoM.

Surely it would rely on creating that traffic rather than rely on the existing traffic to the IoM.

There have been a lot of negative responses to the idea (no wonder the Tourist Board aren't able to generate much interest in our island if so many residents see it that way).

As the original proposal suggested, the IoM is an ideal spot for a 3 or 4 day stopover as part of a holiday. It is enough time to explore and enjoy without becoming too bored.

The only doubt is whether the will exists at the Steam Packet to embrace any kind of innovation such as this. It would certainly have to be a longer-term project that simply one year in order to advertise it properly and to see if can increase the volume of traffic to make it economically viable.

Before condemning what, personally, I think is an excellent idea, perhaps some of those posters who have simply turned their noses up at it could try coming up with something better?

[manshimajin]

Agreed it could have some mileage. Manshimajin why not contact the Tourism dept with your idea and see what happens?

 

More thanks to all for your comments. The last few were more encouraging again - I was just staring to think that people believed the island was not worth visiting. I reckon we have a lot to offer in terms of being a unique, diverse and very compact location. But this needs to be developed and supported. It is almost as if we think tourism is not really an important sector of the economy when compared with financial services, boat registration and offshore gambling.

 

I will work something up for the Tourist Board.

 

A quick added comment - yes, my thought is how to generate additional added value traffic into the IoM whilst using the existing ferry infrastructure that services both UK and Ireland in the summer months. My answer is to 'divert' some off the direct route Ireland-England. The latest IOM stats that I can find indicate that in 2006 there were 154,000 tourists arriving by ferry (including day trippers and on business). The comparable stat for the ROI is about 2 million tourists (Ireland seperates out business visits). If we could attract 1% of that market to do a stopover in the IoM it would be an additional 12% - and I guess if you exclude the TT period visitors it would be a much larger percentage of tourists for the remaining summer months.

 

PS: Looking up the Tourist Board's website it was interesting to see that they are presenting themselves under the banner of the IoM Government website. Tourism Ireland, Visit England, Visit Scotland and Tourism Wales all have 'independent' sites. I am not sure what this tells me - I sort of a get a signal from it that "Tourism is part of our bureaucracy" not "Tourism Welcomes you". Just a random observation on how we present ourselves.

[Albert Tatlock]

I will work something up for the Tourist Board.

An irish approach will go down well - the Tourist Board are experts in blarney.