Clare well placed to gain from genealogy tourism

Nicola Corless, writing in this week’s Clare Champion newspaper, reports that County Clare is well placed to gain from genealogy tourism, not least due to the work done by Clare County Library on its website. She writes that

Clare could attract thousands of overseas visitors to the area as part of a national project targeting the Irish diaspora but only with a long-term approach, a local genealogist has said. While the county has yet to find its Katy Perry or Ned Kelly, Clare is ideally placed to take advantage of a resurging interest in genealogy and a growing genealogy tourism market according to the chairman of the Clare Roots Society, Gerry Kennedy. “Clare is very well placed because of two things. The Clare County Library website has a genealogy section, which is attracting a lot of interest from people all over the world. It is regarded as one of the foremost genealogy sites in Ireland and we are very fortunate that Clare library has such an excellent site”, he told the Clare Champion. “The second reason is that Clare was one of the counties in the West of Ireland that had a lot of people emigrating over the years. There is a huge interest in Clare, particularly from Australia, because of the large numbers who left,” he continued…..