Another Accolade for City of Culture Derry

Still flushed with its success in being named UK’s City of Culture for 2013, Derry has now been named one of the world’s top five cities to visit by LateRooms.com - a hotel booking website that can boast more than a quarter of a million visitors a day. The city has already been recently tipped by travel guide Lonely Planet and British Airways as one of the places to go this year.

“From cultural exhibitions to contemporary music concerts to hosting the Turner Prize, Derry will be buzzing all year round,” writes the site’s travel blogger Martin Solly. He says the city’s culture capital status, and its hosting of the All Ireland Fleadh puts it among the places to visit this year - alongside Marseille, Christchurch, Amsterdam and Seoul.

“The world’s biggest Irish festival is always guaranteed to be one helluva (sic) party, and Derry is where it’s taking place,” the blogger continues. “The Northern Ireland city is the UK’s City of Culture for 2013, and the 10-day All Ireland Fleadh is just one of hundreds of events happening inside the walls of this historic city. “A short break here in 2013 is sure to be Legenderry.”

The latest accolade for Derry comes after the globetrotter’s bible Lonely Planet rated the city as the fourth best in the world to visit this year. Also in December airline giant British Airways ranked Derry at number 7 - sandwiched between the Dominican Republic’s Punta Cana and Las Vegas - on the airline’s top 13 destinations to visit in 2013.

Picking up on the Irish meaning of Derry as “Oak Grove”, Derry City of Culture 2013 organisers hope that, like a great oak, City of Culture will produce many acorns that will flourish for years to come. The programme has hundreds of events happening throughout the city over 365 days and involves dozens of organisations and thousands of people.

Chief executive of the City of Culture Company Shona McCarthy believes the line-up will attract "hundreds of thousands of visitors" to the city and wants Derry and her citizens to stand tall on the cultural landscape in 2013. "The enormous success of this project will be the people of this city having a conversation that is outward and confident," she says.

"It will mean Derry losing its second-city syndrome and the people will have a pride of place that comes from within." Now that all the planning has been done, with a superb programme of events put in place what, for McCarthy, will make Derry City of Culture 2013 a success?

"I want there to have been a shift in perception from the outside," she says. I want journalists, when they talk about Derry, to do so in a different tone, not a negative one. I want to look over the year and go, ' there was so many hundred thousand people that came to Derry, the hotels were filled, businesses flourished'.