Douzelage towns to participate in Global Greening

Nine partner towns of the Douzelage European Town Twinning Network will turn green this St Patrick’s Day as part of Tourism Ireland’s Global Greening initiative.

The idea for the network of towns to join the global initiative was spearheaded by Bundoran (Ireland) Tourism Officer Shane Smyth who last year presented the plan to all the member towns at their annual General Meeting which took place in Finland. Four towns in the network last year “greened” a building or monument and the challenge was set for more towns to join in for 2020.

He said ‘we are always keen to make a stronger connection with our partner towns through Douzelage and we are absolutely thrilled that so many of them have come on board this year to turn a building or monument green for our national holiday. There’s some very interesting looking landmarks proposed and I’m excited to see what they look like when they turned green.’

The greening of Douzelage town landmarks is welcomed by Tourism Ireland and they will be added to their Global Greening list for 2020 alongside internationally renowned landmarks like Niagara Falls, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Burj Al Arab in Dubai, the Moulin Rouge in Paris and hundreds of others worldwide. Finola O’Mahony of Tourism Ireland Europe added ‘it’s great to have even more landmarks across Europe turning green as part of Tourism Ireland’s Global Greening initiative for 2020. We welcome the Douzelage partner towns and look forward to even more of them joining in the initiative in the years to come.’

The Douzelage European Town Twinning network will benefit from the publicity that Tourism Ireland will generate through sending it to more than 20,000 international media contacts. The equivalent advertising value of the worldwide campaign is estimated as at least €10 million.

The landmarks to be greened are:

For more on Douzelage Town Twinning see www.douzelage.eu