KERRY-BASED Fexco is purchasing a 74 per cent stake in Gulliver, the computerised tourist information and reservation system jointly owned by Bord Failte and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board (NITB). The balance of the company will be owned by Bord Failte and the NITB.
Fexco is paying around Pounds 3.2 million for the stake. Its managing director, Mr Brian McCarthy, said he planned to spend Pounds 2-Pounds 3 million revamping and expanding the system. "It needs to be changed radically," he told The Irish Times.
Mr McCarthy plans that the system will provide an advance booking service for tourists to Ireland and a more efficient service on their arrival.
He said it would be a major task for Fexco to develop the system.
The current Gulliver operation was set up in 1990 as a computer-based information and reservations system. But, in his 1995 report, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) said Gulliver accounted for only 2 per cent of all accommodation booked in the Republic and had never functioned as intended.
Between 1990 and 1995 total expenditure on Gulliver was Pounds 10.2 million. This included EU grants of Pounds 2.9 million, a Bord Failte injection of Pounds 2.6 million Pounds 1.6 million from the International Fund for Ireland and Pounds 1.5 million from the NITB. It generated an income of Pounds 1.6 million in fees from members and transaction fees. But less than one-third of the accommodation providers who were fee paying members used the service.
Bord Failte lost a total of Pounds 641,000 on Gulliver, despite its own worst case scenario of a Pounds 445,000 deficit.
After publication of the 1995 C&AG report, the shareholders announced they were seeking a private sector partner "with proven capabilities in technology innovation".
