Dublin will host the World Youth and Student Travel Conference (WYSTC) in 2014, which will bring over 800 youth-orientated travel agents and operators to the capital and is expected to generate over €1.1 million in revenue for the city. The announcement was made at the 2013 WYSTC, currently underway in Sydney, with international delegates already looking forward to September 2014 and their arrival in Dublin. 
Each year WYSTC travels to a different destination allowing attendees to get first-hand experience of the topics and trends affecting youth and student travel within the host country. In addition to the conference, Fáilte Ireland is organising fact-finding trips for delegates before and after the event to ensure the operators get an authentic taste of Ireland.
Dublin’s bid to host the event was devised and pitched by Fáilte Ireland’s Dublin Convention Bureau (DCB) and saw off stiff competition from Athens, among others. Keith McCormack from Fáilte Ireland’s Business Tourism Unit said: “With the youth travellers of today becoming the big spending tourists of tomorrow, securing this conference and this elite group of agents will go a long way in attracting more visitors to Ireland in the future.”
Research shows Ireland to be performing extremely well as a conference and business meeting destination. Fáilte Ireland research shows that nine in 10 overseas conference delegates registered a “very satisfied” rating for their experience of Ireland as a destination for international conferences and almost 85% say that they would certainly recommend Ireland as a conference destination. Almost nine in 10 conference delegates say that they would also highly recommend Ireland as a destination for a holiday or short break and eight in 10 say that it is likely that they would return to Ireland for a holiday or short break in the future.
This is important because, on average, international delegates spent over six days in Ireland with nearly a quarter of delegates using the conference to mix business and leisure. Almost half the international delegates were from Mainland Europe, with one in five from North America. Britain and Northern Ireland accounted for a quarter of international delegates.
