Chamber Visit Midleton

28th November 2013

A group from Tullamore led by Chamber of commerce president Anne Starling visited Midleton last week. The purpose of the visit was to try to establish if Tullamore could learn any lessons from Midleton as to how to fully capitalise on having a distillery and visitor centre in a town.

William Grant and Sons are making a substantial investment in Tullamore in building a brand new distillery in Tullamore and having already considerably upgraded the Tullamore D.E.W visitor centre on the banks of the Grand Canal.

The group from Midleton remarked that 20 years ago their town was a market town with little or no tourism. Most tourists that visited cork went to Cork City and West Cork. Irish Distillers carried out a major development of the old distillery creating a visitor experience. The business community in Midleton decided to come together in an effort to grow business in the town using this development as the catalyst.

They formed East Cork tourism. This group comprised of business people from Midleton, Cobh and Youghal. They identified all that the region had to offer in terms of attractions, activities, accommodation, restaurants bars etc. They formed a company which set about formally packaging the offering from the area and attempting to market it to potential visitors.