By Genevieve Sheehan, Founder & CEO – Sheenco Travel
In Ireland we’d call where I’m from in West Cork, the back of beyond. Yet 30 miles from this rural village is Dede in Baltimore, a now two-Michelin-star restaurant. To get there you have to pass Restaurant Chestnut in Ballydehob, run by a former schoolmate of mine who holds a star of his own.
Even the quietest corners of Ireland have moved far beyond the place many visitors still picture.
At this time of year, when many are celebrating Irish culture or planning on retracing Irish roots, they discover a country transformed in recent decades. And yet, only the other night our local publican brought out pavlova for the few stragglers still in the bar at closing time. Plates were passed hand to hand and the conversation rolled on well past midnight.
For all that has changed, the people haven’t.
One of the clearest ways you see the changes is in how vacationers travel to Ireland now. B&Bs and coach tours are still here, but demand has shifted up-market: renovated castles, five-star manor hotels, the best golf courses in the world, private drivers, and bespoke itineraries.
One of the biggest drivers of this change is the North American market, which is itself changing fast. My company, Sheenco Travel is the premier luxury tour operator for North Americans booking bespoke travel to Ireland. We moved sales to the United States in 2022 via a contractor model, while keeping our operations team at home in Ireland.
The evolving dynamic in Canada
Last year though it became clear that many Canadians did not want to deal with an American based team and would not answer calls from a U.S. number.
I received so many emails with this complaint and my response was always the same: we are Irish-owned, and I am a Canadian citizen myself. So last year we launched Sheenco Canada to meet that demand and evolving dynamic.
Already this year many Canadians are looking for alternative travel destinations as they boycott the US, and many Americans are thinking twice about travelling to Mainland Europe as they are unsure about how they will be received. Ireland is emerging as a natural choice for both.
The roots piece matters too and they go deep. In the summer of 1847, the population of Toronto more than doubled following the arrival of Irish famine refugees – known as the “year of the Irish”
In 2025, Canada was home to an estimated 4.6 million people of Irish descent, representing about 15% of the Canadian population. In a recent census almost 30,000 Canadian residents registered their place of birth as Ireland.
A very different Ireland
My own mother comes from a long line of Canadians who left Ireland in the 1800s. My cousins in Kingston, Ontario keep an album with photographs of the Irish family left behind by my great-great-grandfather, E. D. Swift; and by the looks of it, his sister crossed over too. My family is one of those like so many others dreaming of coming back to the homeland and retracing their roots or discovering Irish culture on a once in a lifetime holiday.
However the Ireland they’ve been told about is very different to the Ireland of today.
Ireland now ranks among the highest GDP-per-capita countries globally, is the European base for many of the world’s leading technology and pharmaceutical firms, and has one of Europe’s most highly educated workforces, with over half of young adults completing higher education. Once a country defined by emigration, Ireland has become a global hub for innovation, investment and talent.
The pharmaceutical sector alone now counts more than 90 companies, over 50,000 jobs and exports approaching the €100 billion mark, numbers that would have been unthinkable when coach tours ruled the roads.
Yet many still plan a trip expecting the Ireland of old – a stay in a family B&B and dinner in the host’s kitchen. Instead, they find a country that has evolved into a luxury destination, with some of the highest prices in Europe. Several forces have combined to drive this transformation in Irish tourism.
The forces driving the transformation in Irish tourism
Ireland now has dozens of stayable castles in active use across the island, from Ashford, Dromoland, Ballynahinch, Kilkea, Cabra, to Lough Rynn and Castle Leslie. Alongside a wider pool of restored manor houses and country estates, while independent round-ups put the five-star hotel count up more than 30% from an official list in 2009.
In alignment, national marketing bodies have shifted their focus to visitors who spend more, due to limited accommodation spaces and rising costs. Meaning incentivising higher-value trips rather than chasing headcount. Traveller behaviour also changed and remained changed during the pandemic.
Visitors who would have climbed onto a packed coach had to consider private, made-to-measure trips because they felt safer and more in control. They liked that format and didn’t go back. Ireland’s own tourism trackers show that the post-Covid visitor has not returned to big buses: demand for coach tours has fallen sharply, while interest in private, custom and small-group travel continues to rise and is now described by operators as the segment driving normal or above-normal sales.
At the same time the market has split: with budget travellers booking their own flights, rooms and transport online to save money, while higher-spend travellers now expect full planning. Meaning drivers who know the back roads, concierge services to handle all the details, and the best accommodation to meet specific needs.
Golf is the force-multiplier that turns high spend into very high spend – especially for corporate and incentive travel. The Ryder Cup at Adare Manor in 2027 is already funnelling demand into authorised packages and early planning, and the island’s global profile has been boosted by The Open returning to Royal Portrush in 2019 and again in 2025, putting Irish links back on screens worldwide and driving pre and post event travel to the courses golfers dream about playing.
The money fuelling this shift is increasingly North American. The Irish Central Statistics Office tallied 1.24 million U.S. visitors in 2024 which is an increase of almost 10 per cent. While almost 200,000 Canadians reflects a rise of 24 per cent – with North America accounting for 36% of all overseas spend and per-capita spend of roughly triple the average British visitor and nearly double the Mainland-Europe average.
Nevertheless, the best moments here aren’t transactional and never will be. We always build space into our trips to allow for authentic experiences and connections, because that’s still what sets Ireland apart. It’s the spontaneous Irish sing-song, the easy, genuine chat in a bar or local shop, and the feeling that people constantly have time for you.
Ireland may have changed but the people haven’t. In a moment when Canadians are rethinking how and where they spend, that mix of luxury and boutique experiences with authentic, human connection still turns a visit into a homecoming, even for guests who have never been before.
