Belfast Zoo Wins Hat-Trick Of Awards

Belfast Zoo picked up three prestigious tourism awards last week the best of which was being named as the 'Attraction of the Year' in the Northern Ireland Tourism Awards 2007.

The zoo, which is one of the top attractions in Northern Ireland, receiving more than 290,000 visitors a year, was also awarded with the 'Best Northern Ireland Visitor Attraction' in the Northern Ireland Travel and Tourism Awards and as the 'Visitor Attraction of the Year' by the Go Belfast Gong Awards.

Visiting the zoo, Tourism Minister Nigel Dodds congratulated Belfast Zoo on the awards saying, "Winning these awards is great news for Belfast Zoo. I congratulate them on their achievements and indeed on the important contribution they make to tourism in Northern Ireland.

"Tourism has a major role to play in Northern Ireland's economic future. To ensure tourism is at the forefront, we have set ambitious goals to increase the number of tourists visiting Northern Ireland to 2.5million and grow tourism revenue to £520million each year by 2011.

"Winning these recent awards can only but encourage more visitors to Zoo, Belfast and Northern Ireland as a whole."

A winning theme central to each award was the increasing number of visitors to the Zoo and high quality customer service. The judges also praised the Zoo for creating more interactive visitor experiences such as animal feeding times, keeper talks and education outreach programmes.