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Ireland wins 'Best Destination' title.

Ireland has been voted Best European Destination at the British Group Travel Awards beating off stiff competition from other

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destinations like Belgium, Germany, Iceland and Malta to claim the title. The award was presented to representatives of Tourism Ireland at the awards ceremony, which took place recently in London.

Pictured are Judith Cassidy and Julie Wakley (front, centre) with Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland, and the Tourism Ireland team in London, with the award for ‘Best European Destination’.

€100m Brexit Tourism Loss

Hospitality businesses face the loss of about €100 million this year as the fallout from Brexit hits British holidaymakers’ spending power, according to ITIC..

Official figures show that the number of British visitors coming to the Republic fell 7 per cent in the first five months of the year as the effect of a weakened sterling took hold.

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Eoghan O’Mara Walsh, chief executive of the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation noted that the Central Statistics Office has calculated that those who are coming are spending 20 per cent less.

“If you expand that out to 12 months, it’s likely to be €100 million less,” he told a British Irish Chamber of Commerce seminar on Brexit and culture, arts, tourism and sport.

Michael Bowes has decided to retire from running the Fernhill Hotel, in Carrigaline after 66 years of business and is selling the 39-bed hotel, with 10 holiday homes alongside, his own private residence, on 5.5 acres. The properties are being sold by Savills Cork, who guide at €4.5 million.

Not included in the sale offer is the adjacent Fernhill Golf Club, also developed by the Bowes family and which, like this 5.5 acres, is zoned Strategic Land Reserve (SLR) with a possibility of more specific future development'

Born 79 years ago in Birr, Co Offaly, Michael Bowes left school at 13, went to England in 1953, and trained in plumbing/sanitary engineering in London’s Holbrook Road polytechni

Character Cafés Celebrate Summer

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Cork Character Cafes across the county will be telling the next chapter in the Story of Cork Food from Sunday 2nd July – Saturday 8 July. This time the celebration is of “Cork’s Summer Bounty” through specially created, seasonal and local dishes, displays and storytelling.

It is peak summer in Ireland’s most southerly county. The ingredients these independently owned and committed cafes draw on come from the sea and shores spanning Castletownbere to Ballycotton; the wild hedgerows in every corner of the county and the fruits and vegetables cultivated by the many skilled small growers and bigger established farmers. Cork’s food producers and everyday food providers like Lettercollum Kitchen Project and Sticky Bun in Clonakilty, Idaho Café and Nash 19 in Cork City, Urru in Bandon, The Old Blarney Post Office Café, The Stuffed Olive in Bantry, Kalbos in Skibbereen and Budds Ballydehob.

The Cork Character Café Series, led by owner of Urru Culinary Store and Failte Ireland food champion, Ruth Healy (pictured), aims to gradually build consumer awareness of what makes Cork food ‘Cork’

Tetrarch plans Cork hotel

Cork City Council has agreed to sell three buildings at 7-9 Parnell Place and 1-2 Deane Street to Tetrarch Capital whichintends to convert the properties into a budget boutique hotel and designer hostel with ground floor bars and restaurants.

The Parnell Place/Deane Street development is one of several recent infrastructural proposals for the area. Dalata plans to open a new hotel opposite the site, while UCC hopes to develop a new business school nearby and Cork City Council have also invested €2 million in improving public space at Parnell Place.