Air Canada & Tourism Ireland host an 'Epic' evening

With St. Patrick's Day just passed and the launch of Air Canada’s new Toronto-Shannon and Montreal-Dublin routes only a few months away, the carrier partnered with Tourism Ireland to celebrate the upcoming launches.

The Epic Ireland event brought Air Canada and Tourism Ireland’s industry partners to downtown Toronto for an evening of all things Ireland, including traditional Irish folk music and cuisine found throughout the destination.

The new routes, which are scheduled to launch in June, will operate with Air Canada’s new Boeing 737 Max 8, featuring a Business and Economy cabin configuration. In addition, Air Canada’s Toronto-Dublin service will move from Air Canada Rouge to the mainline Air Canada service, while the seasonal Vancouver-Dublin service will increase from three to five weekly flights upon its resumption this summer.

“We’re really excited!” Steve Goodfellow, Air Canada’s senior director of sales for Eastern Canada, told PAX. “It’s going to be terrific for Air Canada and our partners, who are going to be able to sell more Ireland product.”

For Tourism Ireland’s Dana Welch, the new Toronto-Shannon route will provide more direct access to Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, an increasingly popular driving route for Canadian travellers along Ireland’s western coast.

“Traditionally a lot of our access is into Dublin and this is a great opportunity to extend that experience for their clients, so they can fly into Dublin and out of Shannon,” Welch told PAX, adding that since her start with Tourism Ireland in Canada in 2015, airlift has nearly doubled. “It’s an opportunity to get up close and personal with the Wild Atlantic Way and flights into Shannon will provide easy access.”

The new routes will also play a role in increasing Canadian arrivals to Ireland, which Welch said have only continued to climb in recent years. “We had a double digit increase last year and broke the 200,000 mark. It’s put us in the top 10 of all the source markets globally – we’re currently at number 10.”

And with the Canada-Ireland trade relationship increasing in recent times (13 government ministers from Ireland visited Canada within the last 12 months), Ambassador Jim Kelly told PAX that increasing air connections are vital for both travel and business.

“We have a very strong historic connection – one in seven Canadians claims Irish heritage – but now we’re all about the future and the relationship moving forward,” Kelly said. “We welcome these connections and we need many more; connectivity is the lifeblood of trade and tourism and both have flourished in recent years.”