Royal Irish Tours celebrates 25th anniversary

Over the past 25 years, Royal Irish Tours (RIT Vacations) has grown significantly from offering 15 scheduled departures in its first year of operations to having over 250 tours set for 2026. 

“In 2002, we released our very first brochure. We released a tour series with 15 scheduled coach tour departures and that was fairly optimistic at that time and yet we operated about 12 of them successfully so that was our starting point in 2002,” founder & president Ian Duffy shared during the first of two RIT events held at Noonan’s in Toronto yesterday to mark the anniversary. “Currently in 2026, we have over 250 scheduled departures for next year so quite the difference in the 25 years so we’re delighted by that.”

Reflecting back on the early days of the business, Duffy noted that launching a travel company shortly after 9/11 was a difficult task with all the uncertainty at the time. 

“We started out just after September 11th, which you all know was a terrible tragedy in the world. It was a difficult time to set up a business. A lot of people probably thought we were crazy, a bad time to start the business, but we persevered,” he said, adding that the Canadian-owned and family-run company also retained all its staff during the pandemic. “I’m almost embarrassed to say this, I started in travel in 1975 so I’m technically celebrating 50 years in the travel industry.”

RIT’s John Fallon, Katherine Watts, Sinéad Duffy and Jonathan Sargeant

During a heartfelt speech, Duffy gave an individual shoutout to all his children, Conor, Lorcan, Ronan and Sinéad, who are all involved in the family venture today, for their contributions to RIT, as well as praising the RIT team, some of whom have been with the company for over 20 years.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child and our company is a bit like that,” he said. “We’ve had an incredible village of people and partners who have helped us over the many years, they helped get us here on our 25th anniversary. One of the main things for our success over the last 25 years has been a great staff. We’ve had a brilliant staff working with us since day one. Some of them have been working with us for 10 years, and we even have quite a few who’ve been working with us for 20 years.”

He also gave a warm tribute to his wife Patricia – or Tricia as she is known to family and friends – for all her efforts over the past quarter of a century and beyond. 

Tourism Ireland’s Sandra Moffatt (l) and Lauren Lamonday (r) with Ian Duffy

“Lastly, I would like to thank a person who was instrumental in our success, but more or less behind-the-scenes in the last 25 years, basically did a bit of everything – sales calls in the early days, brochure development, trade shows, everything and any odd job that needed to be done whilst raising our four children. That allowed me the time and the energy to concentrate and grow Royal Irish Tours over the last 25 years, and that’s my wife Patricia,” he said.  

After relocating from Ireland to Canada in 1988, from the get-go, the goal of RIT was to offer more meaningful Ireland experiences for travellers by those who truly understood the destination, filling what they saw as a void in the market. 

“We wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for one man who had a great vision back in 2001 to set up a tour operator specializing in just Ireland from Canada,” noted Jonathan Sargeant, director of sales for Royal Irish Tours. “Fast forward 25 years and Royal Irish Tours now has over 25 full-time staff, an office in Dublin, and tours running from mid-April to the end of October, almost always full.”

RIT and partners at Niagara Falls earlier this week 

Joining the festivities were members of the RIT office from Ireland, as well as partners who participated in road show events around Ontario earlier in the week.

“We have a long-standing partnership with the team at Royal Irish Tours, they really are incredible to work with,” shared Tourism Ireland’s Director Canada, Sandra Moffatt. “We always say the best thing about Ireland is the people and these guys are really a steadfast example of that.”

The second event was a celebration for family, friends and partners, with RIT organizing a shuttle to pick up the team from the Richmond Hill office down to the Danforth. 

“We just finished a series of roadshows, we were in London, Hamilton and Oshawa, and we had some great support on that – we had 12 partners from Ireland with us for the whole week and we saw at least 300-400 travel agents around our tour,” Duffy added. “We’d also like to thank all our travel trade partners, all the travel agencies all across Canada, who took us into their hearts from day one, without them, we wouldn’t be here either.”

For more on Royal Irish Tours, its history, team and family ties, check out the special 25th anniversary commemorative magazine. 

Top image: RIT’s Ian Duffy, Conor Duffy, Sinéad Duffy and Jonathan Sargeant