Mr. John James O'Hara:

Pure Irish Life Tours is based in Leitrim and the song “Lovely Leitrim” says it all as one of our main headliners. This summer Carrick-on-Shannon ran a 400 centenary which was very successful for the town and the county. We are developing tourism products for north Leitrim. North Leitrim has two colleges nearby, Sligo Institute of Technology and St. Angela's College of Education. We are developing a tourism network within the colleges with our international students. There are over 31,000 international students in Ireland and 50% of them are the top 2% in their home countries who won scholarships to come study in Ireland.

Another issue is how to fill our bed and breakfasts during our winter months. So many of our bed and breakfasts are going out of business because of the oversupply of hotels. The National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, hotels have 16,000 bedrooms to sell every night. That is a major problem in Sligo.

In the UK market, foreign students brought in €14 billion in 2012, which is forecast to rise to €20 billion by 2020. We must grow that market to create a winter market for our bed and breakfasts. We hosted a weekend in Castle View Bed and Breakfast in Sligo-Leitrim where we showed Ireland and Oman in the Middle East. We invited more than 80 guests from different colleges throughout Ireland from Brazil, France and Spain. Many ideas came from that network. We can learn from the people living in these markets how to sell to them. In Sligo alone we have 370 international students. They are worth over €2 million in college fees and to the local economy they are worth approximately €3 million. This market should grow to help our tourism business in the winter.

The most significant trend among US customers this year is that they want all-inclusive packages. We see a need to work closely with Scotland. The people who stayed with us this year spent six days with us, two days in Lough Erne resort and one day in Dublin. The major trend among US customers is to stay in Ireland for seven to ten days and then go on to Scotland for seven to ten days. It is an important trend for us to explore. We are developing a new website called Pure Irish Life Tours which will contain four small websites. We own domain names such as irelandandscotlandtours.com, scottishandirishtours.com, irishandscottishtours.comand scotlandtours.com. When people do Internet searches we will be at the top of the results. The 24 small websites come into one main website that can show the whole area. This is the most important project to boost the online presence of the west of Ireland.

Social media marketing is another major issue. We must examine how Fáilte Ireland markets on social media. Our main business from the US comes in at 2 a.m. because people are online at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. over there. We do not see Fáilte Ireland or Tourism Ireland online at that time of night. People are sitting down relaxing and looking at Facebook and Twitter at that time of night. That is when they are researching their holidays in Ireland.

Marketing in the Middle East is a major issue. We are working very closely with some students from Oman who are staying with us in the House over the winter. They are very bright guys. There are 200 million people in the Middle East and 80 million in the Gulf region. The tell us there are no bed and breakfasts or hotels throughout Ireland doing their type of food, halal, and marketing that abroad. People in Oman go on holidays to Salalah, their second biggest city, because of the rain. They have a big rain festival there. Ireland has any amount of rain, and that is a major issue for them. This year we had people from New Mexico, which has an annual rainfall of 5 mm. They want to leave the heat. They are not coming to Ireland for heat. We are inviting people to get away from their heat, come to Ireland, relax; they might get wet but they will enjoy it. I have put a link in my presentation to an article about the rain festival in Oman to show their marketing ploy. It is not just rain, but monsoon rain.

The Gathering was a great event which brought local people together. They enjoyed every bit of The Gathering from the music in the pubs to the whole cultural experience. The members should look at China and the different things they do every year and how they do them. For 2015 we could do "lifestyle for food" in conjunction with the World Expo in Milan, Italy. A sub-theme is food for better lifestyle. We could showcase our food, restaurants and pubs at the Expo. In 2016 we could do "music with life", in 2017 "storm of culture", 2018 "the wild green", which everybody knows, and 2019 "castles with dreams".

We have probably the most spectacular castles in the world and many countries do not have this. When we put up anything about castles we get an unreal amount of "likes" and feedback from the US. In our district alone there are six different castles. We show that to the people and explain their history. Being in the US they do not see that type of history. Why will Ireland not be one of the countries at the World Expo in Milan? I see every other country in the world there.

With paperwork and red tape it takes so long to get funding to develop activities. There should be a second mechanism, a longer-term loan. If one is setting a target over a ten-year or five-year period, one could receive 35% back after year three and year five and one would end up paying the 30% back or could re-invest it back into one's tourism business. That is a very big problem. People are finding it very difficult to get off the ground.

We are developing local networks. One of the major initiatives that has worked well for us this year is the Big Day Out in Leitrim. Three businesses have come together offering landscape walking, canoeing and electric bicycles. We did an international gathering with them involving people from all over the world. The feedback we got from that was unreal. It could be developed in many different counties, pulling together three or four businesses for one day with three or four different events. These are all ideas we are working on the north west. Our biggest problem is funding and shortage of money, so if the committee can help with that I thank the Chairman and members.