The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
SHANNON Heritage’s day visitor attractions have seen an increase of 7% in numbers so far this year.
It’s a strong performance in a difficult time, as CEO John Ruddle explained, in a statement to The Clare Champion. “Shannon Heritage operated day visitor attractions (Bunratty Castle and Folk Park, King John’s Castle, Craggaunowen, Dunguaire, Knappogue and the Brian Boru Centre in Killaloe) are continuing to perform well in 2012 and have experienced an average increase of 7% in visitors for the year to date.
“While the inclement weather and the Olympics have had some impact on visitor numbers in the past couple of weeks, the company remain positive about the attendance prospects for the remained of the year.”
The increase so far this year follows a strong 2011 in which visitor numbers increased by 5% to 436,000.
Shannon Heritage is the tourism and heritage subsidiary of Shannon Development and employs some 280 at peak times. It has been estimated that it contributes around €15 million in revenue to the local economy.
While Shannon Heritage has performed well, there have been difficulties for others in the sector as Brian O’Neill of the Rowan Tree Hostel explained.
“In tourism, it’s another difficult year and it’s not to do with the weather. Ennis actually does pretty well when the weather isn’t fantastic because a lot of people aren’t gone to the coast and people who were at the coast come back into the town. Shannon Airport is the main issue for tourism, not just for Ennis and Clare but for the whole region.”
He feels that the separation of Shannon from the Dublin Airport Authority should proceed quickly and that his own business would have felt the benefits when Shannon was well served by Ryanair.
“We certainly would, especially when the Charleroi flight from Belgium was there, Frankfurt Hahn was there too, the Germans always liked to visit the west and that flight goes into Kerry at the moment. There were flights from Italy too and those were very beneficial for the whole region.”
Mr O’Neill said there are options for visitors to Clare when the weather is bad. “There are tours they can go on, Bunratty Castle is a fantastic site when there’s a wet day. We’re lucky enough that we have the abbey across the road from us, which is open for the season and is free. There’s the Clare Museum and of course, the most popular thing to do in Ireland is go to the pub.”
Ennis hotelier John Madden said that the domestic market has proven to be rather weak. “The overseas visitors weren’t bad at all in terms of numbers, probably eight to 10% up on a low base of last year. The more notable decline would be in the home market, that is extremely disappointing.
“I would say weather probably has a little bit to do with it but I think overall the whole economic climate that prevails at the moment. People will go out for special occasions but the casual dining and the casual weekend or couple of days away is long gone. July was extremely poor. August looks quite good and September looks quite good so that might give some hope for the long winter.”
While the absence of sunny weather doesn’t help visitors, their experience isn’t significantly diminished if the rain holds off. “People, particularly Americans, will say they didn’t come for the weather. There’s no doubt about it, if it’s a dry day and the sun is shining they will go out into their cars and on coach tours and be quite happy. But if it’s spilling rain and Connemara and these places are on their schedule, they say ‘oh we went there but we saw nothing’. It doesn’t help there’s no doubt about it. It doesn’t have to be warm, I think, once it’s dry.”
