Effort needed for Donegal County Council to promote East Donegal Tourism

Councillor Patrick McGowan told this week's meeting of the Lifford Stranorlar Municipal District that the area is not being promoted in comparison to the likes of Inishowen and Letterkenny by the local authority

"East Donegal and what it has to offer to tourism on a countywide and a regional basis... we have three fine hotels with leisure centres that can compete with any town. One of the big attractions is location, within an hour you can hit the thirteen blue flag beaches, the Derry walls, Omagh, Enniskillen and so on," he said.

"For example if you stay for a week in Bundoran, unless you spend two or three hours in a car going to Inishowen and back or vice versa, it's just too long for normal travelling. To me we have a very good thing and it's not being marketed. If there was a (tourism) map done up of Donegal, (East Donegal would be) very vague, it doesn't do anything to make this area stand out."

"If you had Ballybofey and Stranorlar (at the centre), and then (you show) where you can reach within an hour with a car, all the beaches and attractions, a smaller thing showing off Lifford and Raphoe, show Glenfin, Fintown, and just show how well located East Donegal is."

In response, Senior Economic Development Officer at Donegal County Council Daniel McChrystal said that plans were in place to include highlights from the east of the county in a new map being designed for tourists.

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"It hasn't come up yet as it's still in early development, but our department also works with the Western Development Commission and I also fulfil the role of Atlantic Economic Corridor Officer. For the last probably nine months, year or so, the WDC has been working with a designer to compile a database where people can zoom in or zoom out and look at say, businesses and attractions, basically what the county has to offer," he said.

"They're doing it for all the Atlantic Economic Corridor counties so that's why it's taking a bit of time. Once that is completed and available that's something we plan to put online as part of a joint effort between us and the tourism team."

Cllr McGowan responded saying that he would like to see a specific effort put into promoting the east of the county, not having its promotion packaged in with county-wide and region-wide efforts.

"That's not what I was asking, I'm asking specifically about this Lifford Stranorlar MD, East Donegal, we're going to get packaged in. The centre (of this map) is probably going to be put in Letterkenny."

"See all these tourism magazines that come out, I saw something... where we didn't feature at all. There was a couple of pages where they showed the full county and one of them had a logo or something over East Donegal. This was me asking for something for East Donegal, not to be included in something (county-wide)."

"When it comes to us, we just get a photograph, maybe the golf club in Ballybofey and that's that."