Orla accompanies Tourism Ireland as they lead a sales blitz to the United States

‘Best of Ireland’ sales mission visits Cleveland, Cincinnati, Minneapolis-Saint Paul and Chicago.

Tourism Ireland, together with a delegation of 13 tourism companies including Ireland Chauffeur Travel, as well as Aer Lingus and Delta, undertook a sales blitz to the United States last week.

The ‘Best of Ireland’ sales mission visited key cities in the United States, including Cleveland, Cincinnati, Minneapolis-Saint Paul and Chicago. The schedule includes a business to business event in each city, featuring interactive presentations to showcase Ireland and the participating companies from Ireland engaging in hundreds of meetings with US travel professionals. It’s a valuable opportunity to inspire and influence the US travel agents, helping to deliver more regional and longer-stay business for Ireland in 2024 and beyond. Tourism Ireland also highlighted the increased air access from Minneapolis-Saint Paul to Dublin with Aer Lingus and Delta, as well as direct flights from Cleveland and Chicago with Aer Lingus.

Orla Leahy, Ireland Chauffeur Travel, said: “Thank you to Tourism Ireland for the opportunity to travel to the US and meet and forge connections with travel professionals and agents in each of the cities as well as promote the island of Ireland as a must destination. We look forward to developing new partnerships in 2024 and beyond.”

Alison Metcalfe, Tourism Ireland’s Head of North America, said: “This week’s ‘Best of Ireland’ sales mission to Cleveland, Cincinnati, Minneapolis-Saint Paul and Chicago provides an excellent platform to connect our tourism partners from Ireland with key US travel professionals – to inform and influence those travel professionals about what the island of Ireland has to offer and, importantly, to encourage them to include the destination in their future programmes and recommend it to their clients. As well as highlighting the increased air access from Minneapolis-Saint Paul to Dublin and direct flights from Cleveland and Chicago, we’ll be shining a spotlight on the many things to see and do, and all that is new and exciting, on a vacation on the island of Ireland in 2024. 

“The United States remains an extremely important market for tourism to the island of Ireland – it’s our most important market in terms of revenue and our second-largest market in terms of visitor numbers. Our visitors from the United States tend to stay longer, spend more and tour extensively around our regions.”

Here’s a short video with some highlights from the sales mission.