Stephen Cotter
Managing Director, CIE Tours International
Stephen Cotter is managing director of CIE Tours International, the Irish government-owned tour operator that has brought visitors to Ireland since 1932. The company now carries more than 35,000 travelers a year from North America to Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Iceland, and Spain. He was named managing director in February 2024, after serving as interim managing director from October 2023. He oversees operations across the company’s offices in the U.S., Ireland, and the U.K.
Cotter grew up in Dundalk, County Louth, and got his first taste of business as a boy. He bought stock at Belfast auction rooms for his parents’ secondhand furniture shop. After college in Dundalk and a couple of years in Australia, he joined CIE Tours as a management accountant on March 5, 2001. Over 25 years he has served as financial controller, general manager and, from 2016 to 2024, chief operations officer. In those roleshe helped lead a strategic transformation of the business and its expansion beyond Irelandand Britain.
A CIMA-qualified accountant with an Executive MBA from Dublin City University, Cotter served as deputy chairman of the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation (ITIC) in 2015–16. He has made responsible tourism a priority. That includes the CIE Tours Sustainability Action Fund, which supports community projects such as the Burrenbeo Trust’s ReFarm initiative in the Burren.
