Ireland has been voted number four in a list of “dream destinations” by the readers of a glossy travel magazine in the United States. Almost 8,000 readers of Virtuoso Life magazine took part in the seventh annual “Travel Dreams” survey – to reveal their ideal destination, travel experience and ultimate trip of a lifetime. The results feature in the current summer edition of the magazine.

Welcoming the news, Niall Gibbons, Tourism Ireland’s CEO, said: “We are delighted that Ireland is the number four dream destination of the readers of Virtuoso Life magazine – who are discerning, sophisticated and well-travelled, with a strong desire for authentic experiences, which Ireland has to offer in spades. Tourism Ireland has been working hard to build awareness of the island of Ireland as a premier vacation destination for American travellers, including our co-operation with the Virtuoso travel agents across the US.

“The United States is an extremely important tourism market for the island of Ireland and we believe that we are on course to achieve our best year ever from that market. The most recent figures from the CSO showed a very positive start to 2013, with the strongest first half performance ever from North America. This year, we hope to welcome over one million American visitors, spending about US$1 billion.”

Virtuoso is a by-invitation-only network of over 330 travel agents specialising in luxury travel. The network’s magazine, Virtuoso Life, is published six times a year and is distributed to the homes of 200,000 affluent travellers and top clients of the Virtuoso travel agents.

Australia, Italy and New Zealand took the top three slots in the 2013 “Travel Dreams” survey – but Ireland was ahead of France, South Africa, the Caribbean, Greece, England and French Polynesia. Last year, Ireland came in at number nine in the same survey.