Tourism vital to beat recession says Christy
LISTOWEL could ride out the recession with greater ease if proper steps are taken to attract tourists to town in bigger numbers this year, according to the chairman of the local vintners’.
For whatever reasons the town is failing to attract the numbers of tourists it deserves given its varied attractions. Now, however, its high time for a concerted effort to bring more foreign and domestic visitors in, according to Vintners’ Chairman Christy Walsh.
One more pub shut its doors at the start of the New Year in a depressing beginning to 2012 for the pub trade; despite a reasonably good Christmas. “Like every other business we’re just trying to survive the year. Our overheads are getting any easier, but I think Listowel really needs to get a bigger slice of the tourist cake in Kerry now.
“There’s so much going for this town, we should easily be able to get more buses in, take people on a tour of all the attractions, from the Castle to the Seanchaí and the Lartigue and everything else. We should be looking to put on a half-hour show for them each day and give them a great sense of a real Irish heritage town.”
Christy also pointed to a major source of tourist potential that is completely undersold outside of Listowel: the river Feale.
“It’s a fantastic, scenic river and we could be taking people on boat tours of it and so much else. There really is a hell of a lot we could do to bring more tourists in and keep jobs in our bars and restaurants.”
Christy also said the town council could be doing more in terms of the commercial rate to help local business. “They’re patting themselves on the back for not putting it up the last three years, but they need to be helping business more. Our overheads are bad enough as it is, with Sky TV, insurance, ESB and so on and now the VAT is going up too. Hopefully the Eu ropean Championship will be good to us. But we must try to latch onto the tourist trade in Kerry more.”