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
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
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I missed out the "where". I must have got up this morning without kissing the Blarney Stone!
By David Burdon, Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Ireland? I always where it was. Now they have a new, shorter and more focused domain, I'll certainly make a visit! Methinks that Google's EMD update has devalued much of the inventory of domain squatters.
By David Burdon, Wednesday, October 17, 2012