We have the Ancient East, now Viking Coast mooted

We are of beach and forgotten strands We are Frocken Sunday and ice

cream vans

We are the sticks that the

Mummers bang

We are Tone and Father

Murphy’s men We are the spot where St. Patrick

landed

We are lads on phones, on big

tractors

We are Planters from King

William’s time In a development that could compete head on with the very successful Wild Atlantic Coast, Failte Ireland is looking for companies interested in developing a Viking Coast proposition for the east and south east.

The national tourism development authority has called for companies to register their interest in order to conduct a feasibility study to establish whether the Viking Coast idea could become a world-class visitor experience for the coastal counties of the Ireland’s Ancient East geography.

While Wexford is already part of the Ancient East promotion, that scheme has yet to gain the traction of the Wild Atlantic Way in the west of the country and Viking Coast would be a way of adding to the tourism product in the south east, which many touring visitors use as a transit point before heading to the west of Ireland.

The building of the Ancient East brand comes after Fáilte Ireland successfully marketed the Wild Atlantic Way concept which was launched in 2014 following a €10 million capital investment. At that time, Fáilte Ireland suggested that touring routes were ‘increasingly seen as a powerful regional economic development tool for rural areas’ that can deliver additional jobs and grow the local economy. While 2017 was ‘ the best year ever’ for tourism to Ireland, tourist numbers from Britain, the mainstay of the tourism economy, fell as the fall in the value of sterling pushed up the price of holidays for British visitors.