We cannot allow hugely lucrative business tourism to depart for other shores

Conference and event tourism like Aviation Week was worth a staggering €760 million to the Irish economy in 2019 and we can’t afford to lose it

Catherine Martin, Minister for Tourism: in 2019, business tourism was estimated to be worth €760 million to the economy and supported 20,000 jobs. It is crucial to get it all back

If you walked past the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin during a specific week in January, pre-pandemic, you may well have been struck by the number of well-dressed, prosperous-looking delegates milling around outside it.

Those delegates were in town for Aviation Week, which has become a feature of January in the capital in recent years. Two conferences, organised by specialised international publications, involve the arrival of thousands of high-spending aircraft-leasing executives and their airline counterparts, joining ...