IRELAND has unveiled a visa-waiver scheme allowing British visit visa-holders to travel to Ireland without an additional visa. The move comes in an effort to boost tourism jobs and take advantage of the influx of visitors expected in Britain for the 2012 Olympics. The Irish government has also relaxed visa requirements for cruise ship passengers, thus allowing tourists embarking at any Irish port to easily visit Ireland without the hassle of getting a visa, which usually costs about €60 ($85). The fee will be waived for citizens from 14 countries who have already obtained visas to enter the UK for short-term visits. Among the areas affected will be China, India and some Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries. 'With the visa-waiver programme, visitors to Britain don’t need to pre-plan their trip to Ireland but can easily come for a weekend. We still have quite a bit of work to do to promote this and see how we can use it to our benefit,' said Jim Paul of Tourism Ireland. The initiative is aimed at the emerging tourism market and is expected to run from July 2011 until October 2012. Among the Eastern European countries involved are Belarus, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey and the Ukraine. The Middle Eastern states are Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The scheme will also apply to citizens of Uzbekistan. 'In the last two years the only markets that have seen some development have been India and China while the Middle East market continues to be one of our best markets to-date,' added Paul. 'In 2007, we saw almost nine million tourists to Ireland but since then the last two years have been very difficult, mainly due to the economies of our source markets, namely the US and Britain, which alone forms about 70 per cent of our arrivals. 'In 2009, we had just under seven million arrivals and, with an average guest stay of about five nights, that’s a drop of about 10 million bed nights. A lot of hotels have been struggling, a lot of them closed down recently. However, there have been signs of improvement, mostly from the States and other European markets than Britain.' A Tourism Ireland-led delegation participated at the recently concluded Destination Britain & Ireland (Debi) in Bangalore, India, promoting the new visa-waiver scheme to tour operators, travel agents and travel media from India, China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and the UAE – all key markets for Tourism Ireland. 'The Asia-Pacific region offers exciting possibilities for tourism to the island of Ireland in the medium-to long-term,' said Paul. ‘The United Nations World Tourism Organisation has forecast that the Asia-Pacific region will be one of the fastest-growing regions for outbound travel in the next 10 years.'
