Gulliver Ireland Tourism Accommodation
Award Winners 2005 Announced

Winners of the second annual Gulliver Ireland Tourism Accommodation Awards 2005 were announced today (Thursday, 12th January 2006). Bray's Esplanade Hotel & Fitness Centre was awarded the overall honour. The Gulliver Ireland Awards recognise online marketing excellence demonstrated by Hotel, Guesthouse, B & B and Self-catering accommodation suppliers around the country through their partnership with Gulliver Ireland.

The awards announcement was made in another bumper year for the Gulliver-owned GoIreland.com, the premier online window for Irish tourism businesses and the leading consumer site for tourist information and reservations. Online bookings through GoIreland.com and affiliated websites to December 2005 have increased by 61 per cent compared with 2004. 410,000 bed nights, valued at almost €15.5 million, were booked online for the year 2005.

Headquartered in Killorglin, Co Kerry, Gulliver Ireland is Ireland's leading cost effective provider of tourism information and reservations. Its database contains all approved accommodation providers on the island of Ireland, irrespective of size and location. The system processes bookings for almost 10,000 member properties from the Internet, Tourist Offices and the International Contact Centre. It functions as Ireland's national tourism information database and powers, among others, the Fáilte Ireland website, www.ireland.ie.

Accommodation providers using Gulliver Ireland to market their properties were considered for the awards. The winners were chosen based on a number of criteria, particularly for effective online sales management, a skill that is becoming ever more vital to tourism enterprises of all sizes.

Speaking today at the announcement of the winners, Dr. Stewart Stephens, Managing Director of Gulliver Ireland said, "2005 has seen the Irish tourism sector continue to embrace technology as it develops its Internet sales and marketing capability. The Esplanade Hotel and Fitness Centre, a regional winner in 2004, has improved its online sales and marketing resources to win the overall award. The Esplanade is a worthy winner and a fine example of a hotel that pulls out all the stops in the pursuit of Internet marketing excellence."

"The focus of the Awards is to highlight and encourage excellence in online accommodation marketing. The increasing ability of tourism properties to promote their product online is essential to the industry's well-being and prosperity."

"The fact that we have five winning properties who were award winners last year demonstrates the strides being made to achieve optimum online marketing excellence. We hope that more and more accommodation providers emulate this best practice," added Dr. Stewart Stephens.

The awards were broken down into eight geographic regions with four category awards in each region. The winners are as follows: