School holidays could be staggered going forward in a bid to encourage families to continue planning staycations around Ireland. A proposal put forward by the Tourism Recovery Task Force, it’s one of many suggestions aimed at helping industry recover in the next three years.
Speaking of the three-year plan on RTÉ Morning Ireland, chair of the Tourism Recovery Taskforce Ruth Andrews said:
“As we’re all aware we’re going to be very dependent on our domestic holiday market, we would look not only to depend on it during the Covid environment but in the longer term there’s real potential to increase our staycation market and the domestic market here.”
Adding that a change-up to the school holiday system is one of the taskforce’s “medium-term measures”, Ruth said that the idea is for different counties/regions to look at changing when their midterm breaks are scheduled for – a suggestion that has stemmed from what other countries across Europe have been doing.
“One of the things that we’ve looked at is where, in other countries, they have changed the school holidays – particularly around periods of midterm for instance, where you can spread the school holidays across regions.
Which means you’re extending the capacity across peak periods and, as they’ve done in the UK and across Europe, this is very positively impacted on both the sector’s occupancy and pricing.”
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