Busy year for tourism promotion in Mayo

Members of Mayo County Council and local tourism operators attended a range of national and international events during the year that helped to achieve a lot of exposure for the county and also added to a growing network of contacts in the sector.

Providing an overview of events in 2025, the council's tourism officer Maura Murphy told the recent meeting of the Mayo Economic and Enterprise Development Strategic Policy Committee that a lot of events were attended where the county was given exposure to local, national and international markets in 2025. These included the Holiday World shows in Belfast and Dublin, which gave direct access to target national and international markets and provided good opportunities for networking among tourism providers.

“An event arranged between Ireland West Airport and Tourism Ireland also proved a really interesting partnership this year and Ireland West Airport promoted the flights from Bergamo and Cologne and Tourism Ireland’s work with promoting Ireland internationally," she said. "We also brought a number of tourism providers to this event and it gave great opportunities to network and link in and have direct access to tour operators in Italy and Germany."

Another event was the Milwaukee Irish Festival in August 2025, which is the largest Irish festival in the world. 

"A delegation from Mayo County Council went to it to link in with the US market, which is hugely important, as US tourists are the second highest tourist visitors to Ireland and this strengthens Mayo’s visibility in the US."

There were also two major recent events - the Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) and the Ireland Association for Adventure Tourism (IAAT) conferences - and these brought delegates from all over the world, providing another opportunity for tourism providers to promote themselves and network. 

"The events also generated bed nights for Westport and for Mayo in general, so it was great to be involved with those and for Mayo County Council to support them and we hope to have more events like these in the future.” 

Ms Murphy added that new avenues are being explored all the time in terms of tourism, revealing that the council is currently following up on an approach from a tour company in Dublin that had reached out and offered to include Mayo on its itinerary of trips around the country. She added that a Fáilte Ireland Festival Fund of €32,500 had been spread around Mayo to support a number of events in a small way during 2025, after 40 different groups applied, and advised that the same fund will also be on offer in 2026.

Finally, as part of the new Mayo Tourism Strategy currently being developed, she said marketing and promotion measures will continue in 2026 and will include highlighting new cross-county projects, such as the Spanish Armada Virtual trail and the Joyce County and Western Lake Geopark.

• Published as part of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.