On Sunday 16th March, Tourism Ireland will be hosting the worlds first virtual St. Patrick’s Day parade on the internet in the virtual world of ‘Second Life’. There will be 20 Irish and Celtic themed virtual floats and it will be the centrepiece of the three-day Discover Ireland Festival in ‘Second Life’. ‘Second Life’ has over 12 million users and is one of the biggest virtual worlds. Sixty percent of the users are from the 4 largest of Ireland’s tourist markets: the UK, USA, Germany and France. Tourism Ireland hope that those users of ‘Second Life’ who visit the virtual “Dublin” will then want to visit the real one too. This year Tourism Ireland are planning on spending almost a quarter of their €10 million (£6.7 million) marketing budget online, which I think is a good idea as many other big brands such as Coca Cola and IBM are doing the same. Also if the users of ‘Second Life’ see what the amazing festivities are like in the virtual “Dublin”, next year they may want to visit the real parade like me!

Yesterday VisitScotland.com launched their new website which, according to their press release, was “the most significant change to the UK’s most popular tourism destination website in six years”. In 2007, VisitScotland.com had 11 million visitors which they hope to increase to 12.9 million in 2009. Having previously visited the VisitScotland.com website before it was updated, I can say that the new site is much better than the old one! I like the fact that the site is split into 2 separate areas; Scotland’s Ultimate Visitor’s Guide and the Online Travel Shop. This change makes the site appear easier to navigate and clearly separates those who want to plan their trip and those who want to find accommodation. They also cater for many different languages with their choice from a drop-down list. Basically the site is just a whole lot better than it used to be!