Ireland unveils new strategies to boost tourism from Spain, Italy

Ireland on Monday unveiled two new strategies in a bid to bring in 25 percent more visitors from Spain and Italy over the next four years.

Ireland believed said both Spain and Italy are markets of considerable potential for Irish tourism over the coming years. Monday's strategies set out challenging and ambitious targets, which will see the island of Ireland welcome almost 3.8 million Spanish and Italian visitors between now and 2020 -- 825,000 visitors per year from both countries by 2020.

Spain and Italy have performed extremely well for tourism to the island of Ireland in recent years, according to official figures.

Spain is now the fifth most important market for Irish tourism in terms of visitor numbers and the sixth most important in terms of revenue.

Over half of all Italian visitors to Ireland come specifically for holidays and Italian visitors are among Ireland's higher-spending and longer-staying visitors.

"The Spanish and Italian strategies which are being launched today show how visitors from these markets will play a key part in achieving our growth targets," said Paschal Donohoe, minister for transport, tourism and sport, when he unveiled the new strategies.

Ireland has seen five consecutive years of growth in overseas visitor numbers to the country, culminating in a record year in 2015, with more than 8.6 million visits recorded.

"Despite this, we remain ambitious for even further growth in the Irish tourism sector in the years ahead," he said. Enditem