A major tourism conference is taking place in Dublin today to focus on how to grow the number of Chinese tourists visiting Ireland.
The event - hosted by Fáilte Ireland and the Chinese Embassy - will be opened by Minister of State Kevin Boxer Moran.
In 2018, 100,000 Chinese tourists visited Ireland but Fáilte Ireland says the opportunity to grow this number is significant.
The Chinese market is the biggest outbound tourist market in the world, worth €220bn.
Fáilte Ireland CEO Paul Kelly explains why the Chinese tourist is more important than ever to target:
"There's currently about 12.7 million Chinese tourists come to Europe every year," said Mr Kelly.
"We're only getting about 1% of those tourists and when we compare that with the US for example - we get about 10% of US tourists that come to Europe, come to Ireland/.
"So there is a huge opportunity for us to grow our share of Chinese tourism and in particular our share of Chinese tourism to Europe."
