Kildare Village aiming for more Asian visitors with new flights from China

Kildare Village, which is still awaiting the outcome of an appeal over its planned €50 million expansion, is looking to woo more Chinese tourists to the designer outlet mall, the Irish Times reports. The luxury outlet is teaming up with airlines Hainan and Cathay Pacific to help promote the shopping centre to inbound passengers. The move comes as the centre looks to take advantage of the introduction of flights between Ireland and China last month. Hainan recently started operating four flights a week from Dublin to Beijing, with two direct flights and two that stop over at Edinburgh. Cathay Pacific offers four weekly non-stop flights between Dublin and Hong Kong. Approximately 70,000 Chinese people visited Ireland last year with Tourism Ireland looking to grow this to 175,000 per year by 2025. Value Retail was granted permission for a new expansion that would add an additional 29 shops and two restaurants at Kildare Village in January. However, it has since faced a number of appeals, not least from An Taisce, which claimed that allowing the additional outlets would result in an 18 per cent increase in local traffic. Value Retail said it hoped An Bord Pleanála would give final approval to the expansion shortly.