Tourism Ireland has bought the domain name Ireland.com from The Irish Times for an undisclosed sum.
A new website will be unveiled to tourism industry leaders at the launch of the organisation’s 2013 marketing plans towards the end of the year and will roll out across top tourism markets from January 1 2013.
Niall Gibbons, chief executive of Tourism Ireland, said: "There are obvious benefits for tourism, including ease of recognition and sheer memorability which will allow us to achieve greater ‘stand-out’ in the markets and will bring increased efficiencies in terms of promotion and search engine optimisation.
"The acquisition is timely as we look forward to launching our new website towards the end of the year.
"Tourism Ireland’s Facebook audience is the third largest in the world for tourism bodies (after Australia and Spain) and our new site and new url will help us to harness more effectively the phenomenal growth in social media and to project an even stronger online presence to attract more visitors here."
by Bev Fearis
