'It was our quietest Cheltenham ever' - Irish travel agent says interest in the festival just wasn't there this year

An Irish travel agent has said last week's Cheltenham Festival was the quietest since her business began trading in 2000 and revealed the most common complaint from previous clients who used to regularly make the trip was the number of short-priced favourites trained by Willie Mullins. 

Eimer Hannon, the founder and managing director of Hannon Travel, which is based in Navan and Belfast, said the 2024 Cheltenham Festival was a damp squib from her point of view and the level of interest from customers paled into insignificance compared with a decade ago. 

The second day of the festival saw an alarming dip in attendance to just 46,771, and a smaller Irish contingent was certainly responsible for a proportion of that decrease.