CRI听力: Ireland Tourism

Anchor: With the number of foreign tourists traveling to Ireland down sharply this year, and a huge over-capacity of hotel rooms in the country, the Irish tourism industry is in crisis.

Let's take a closer look with Huangrui.

Tourism is one of Ireland's most important industries with almost a quarter of a million people working in the hospitality sector. In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, about eight million visitors spent around 7 billion US Dollars in Ireland. But this year, with Ireland's main foreign tourist markets in a recession, the number of visitors has dropped sharply.(www.hXen.com)

Figures published by Ireland's Central Statistics Office showed that overseas visits to Ireland fell by over 15 percent in June compared with the same month last year. There were just 630,000 visitors to Ireland in June 2009 compared to almost 750,000 in June last year.

Simon Gregory is the Director of marketing for Ireland's national tourism agency, Tourism Ireland.
SOUNDBITE (English) Simon Gregory, Director of marketing for Tourism Ireland:"'People's confidence is down, people aren't sure about their jobs, they're not sure about what disposable income they've got, and of course their holiday is a big part of that. So it's really brought everything into question and we have to be out there fighting as hard as we can alongside every other destination that has similar problems. Ireland's having a difficult year but every tourism destination around the world is having a difficult year."

The severe economic recession at home is adding to the sense of crisis in the Irish tourism industry. While the numbers of Irish people holidaying at home is up this year, many are spending less.

Eoghan Corry is a travel writer and tourism industry analyst.

"Irish Tourism very exposed. You've got to remember, we're taking in something like nine million visitors, twice the population, that would be four times what competitive markets like Norway, places like that would be. Very dependent on incoming , very dependent on four key markets, two of which are in deep trouble America and Britain, Germany, France not so much."

Irish hotels have responded to the downturn by slashing rates in an effort to attract new customers. On average, prices for hotel rooms are down by about 15 percent over the same period last year. With fewer customers paying less money, many hotels are seeing big downturns in revenue.

Peter McCann, General Manager of The Merrion Hotel in Dublin's city centre says that the price cuts are not sustainable.

"A practice has emerged of just slashing prices in the industry which is not really the way forward, in some cases it is beneficial but long term it's not, it's an unsustainable way of generating cash, and unfortunately it is doing, and has started to do, damage to the industry."

With no end in sight to Ireland's economic misery, the crisis in the tourism industry is set to deepen. And that means an uncertain future for the thousands of people employed in Ireland's hospitality sector.

For China Drive, I'm Huangrui.