by Linda McGrory
A CLAMOUR for up-to-date information during the big
freeze around the country including Inishowen led to
a record number of hits on Irish travel and weather
websites.
Met Eireann recorded a steady rise in visitors to
its website as temperatures plummeted from late
December to early January.
Its website, www.met.ie
, had a whopping 3.2 million visits in the period
from December 14, 2009 to January 13, 2010, latest
figures show.
A one-day peak of 257,515 visits to the Met Eireann
website was recorded on January 10 compared to a
normal daily average of around 75,000 visits.
Meanwhile, the AA Ireland website,
www.aaireland.ie
, was inundated with visitors as people frantically
sought updates on road conditions and travel advice
as weather conditions worsened.
The AA website clocked up 1 million visits from
December 15, 2009 to January 12, 2010.
Its daily visitor figure jumped more than ten-fold
to 80,000 on January 7, as temperatures plunged and
the roads network ground to halt.
Nicola Hudson of AA Roadwatch said the icy
conditions led to tens of thousands of people
logging on to their website for daily traffic and
travel updates as well as last-minute changes to
rail, bus and flight schedules.
"I think many people visited our website because we
were the only site that was compiling traffic and
travel information for the whole of Ireland. We
carried comprehensive details of the state of the
roads in all the different counties as well as
travel information relating to bus travel, rail and
flights.
"We got a lot of feedback from customers who were
grateful for the information and who took the
trouble afterwards to write us an email and commend
us for the content on the website, which was really
nice," she said.
Meanwhile, Brian Delaney of Met Eireann said website
visits rose dramatically in accordance with the
worsening conditions.
"Certainly the peaks in visits would roughly
correspond to the coldest days. It was a remarkable,
once-in-a-generation, spell of weather and the
increase in traffic to our website certainly
reflected that," said Mr Delaney. |
