This article is from page 2 of the 2006-01-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
BUNRATTY Castle and Folk Park has been voted the ninth least enjoyable place to visit in Ireland in a major online survey released last week.
The south Clare tourist attraction finished alongside the likes of Limerick and Belfast city in a survey of 1126 people conducted by the DoChara website.
The survey, carried out between August and November of last year, was compiled completely online through the DoChara website. This is an independently run site which offers advice and reviews about tourist destinations in Ireland.
Dublin City topped the list of least favourite place to visit and was followed by Galway City and Killarney. The top ten included Cork City, Temple Bar, the Ring of Kerry and the Guinness Tour in Dublin.
On a positive note, the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher was listed as the second favourite place to visit in the same survey. The Ring of Kerry topped this section of the pole with Dingle and Newgrange also featuring prominently.
According to Katherine Nolan of DoChara, the survey has created an amount of confusion because more people responded to the “most enjoyable” survey than the “least enjoyable” survey.
“It took far fewer votes to get onto the least enjoyed lists than the favourites one,” Ms Nolan told The Clare People .
“I have looked at those who mentioned Bunratty and there was more than a 3:1 ratio of people who mentioned it positively to those who mentioned it negatively. But that was not enough to get it onto the top 10 favourites list.”
Indeed, almost 50 per cent of those who responded to the survey left the negative comments section blank. Ms Nolan estimates that Bunratty would have finished at around 15th place in the most enjoyable section, had the list been extended past the top 10.
The Director of Heritage and Tourism at Shannon Development, John King, has described the survey as “contradictory”.
“The survey seems to be contradictory in parts with a number of places featuring in the both the most popular and least popular sections,” said Mr King. “We will continue to concentrate on the superb range of attractions and natural beauty that is available in Clare.”
The DoChara website is targeted specifically at the foreign tourist market and the majority of those who responded to survey were American.
Indeed, of the 1126 valid responses 54 per cent listed their nationality as American or Canadian, 19 per cent as British, and 3 per cent as European. 14 per did not specify.