Incoming travel and tours
The Irish Tour Operators Association (ITOA) consists of over 30 leading companies that operate incoming travel and tours to the island of Ireland. Our members package and promote various elements of the Irish tourism product for marketing overseas, and provide value-add services that require expert knowledge, marketing know-how and excellent project management.
Our members are responsible for handling over 465,000 passengers each year, and have relationships with over 4,000 overseas tour operators and others in the incentive, events and conference sectors.
ITOA and its members are the recognised incoming tour operators of the Irish tourism authorities (Tourism Ireland, Fáilte Ireland and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board). We include:
- Ground handler or handling agencies, which provide full and comprehensive land arrangements or specific partial services of an overall land programme for group tours, individual travel and other large movements of passengers such as cruise ships and also act as direct representatives to the market suppliers’ brief
- Destination management companies (DMCs), which provide total management services for corporate meetings and incentive programmes in a destination. A DMC will be involved in designing, planning and delivering a programme to meet the client’s objectives
- Professional conference organisers (PCOs), which through their comprehensive understanding of the conference industry have the necessary skills, experience and technology to successfully manage all aspects of large international conferences and congresses
