THE Council’s messaging on promoting Limerick is “all over the place” and “clunky”, according to councillors, who called for Limerick’s official website to be streamlined.
Speaking at November’s Metropolitan District meeting, Fine Gael councillor Sarah Kiely called on the Council to set up a ‘Visit Limerick’ website and launch a social media campaign with appropriate branding.
“There’s actually a site called ‘Visit West Limerick’ and then we have Limerick.ie – the messaging is all over the place,” Cllr Kiely told the Council executive.
“Our messaging needs to be streamlined. We need to be clear in our websites. We have Limerick.ie and we have Limerick City and County Council, there’s just a raft of different ones happening. This is not industry standards and it’s very confusing,” she claimed.
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“We have Limerick Greenway, we have Christmas in Limerick also, that’s a different page. Nothing points or instructs you to visit Limerick.”
She said of the Council’s official Limerick.ie website.
“There’s ‘Visit Clare’ or ‘Visit Savannah’, but there’s no ‘Visit Limerick’. The clue is in the messaging here.”
Cllr Kiely called on the Council to get it’s act together from a tourism perspective ahead of Ryder Cup 2027.
“Let’s point people in the right direction instead of a scattergun between websites and social media platforms. We need a one stop shop for visitor attractions and we need to do better.”
Fine Gael councillor Dan McSweeney supported Cllr Kiely’s call, saying that the Council is “a little bit all over the place” in its messaging and deemed it a “missed opportunity” that there is no Visit Limerick site.
Social Democrats councillor Elisa O’Donovan also added her support to the motion, and saying she found the Council’s website “clunky” to use.
The Council’s Head of Communications and Marketing, Donn O’Sullivan, told councillors that Limerick already has a well-established and high-performing tourism website in Limerick.ie/discover, which serves as the official tourism portal.
This section of the website, Mr O’Sullivan said, was designed to showcase everything Limerick has to offer to both visitors and locals.
Limerick.ie, councillors were informed, attracts significant traffic, with over a million users in 2024, as well as being recognised as one of the top 25 tourism websites in the world.
“It offers comprehensive listings of accommodation, attractions, events, and itineraries, and, last year alone, it welcomed over one million visitors. The site also provides a vital support to local businesses and event organisers, promoting more than 2,500 events annually and featuring over 2,300 businesses, attractions, and activities, in addition to the strong user base and content ecosystem.
“Limerick.ie consistently ranks as the number one Google search result for key search items including Limerick, visit Limerick, things to do in Limerick, and where to stay in Limerick. These rankings are the result of the platform, scale, credibility, and coordinated content management strategy, advantages that a new standalone website would find extremely difficult to replace,” Mr O’Sullivan advised.
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” said Metropolitan Cathaoirleach Cllr Daniel Butler before moving on to the next item.