Guinness Storehouse woos Chinese

One of the participants on the Tourism Ireland delegation was Fiona Herald, who is business development manager at Guinness Storehouse.

At a pleasant dinner for the visiting delegates in the Embassy, hosted by Ambassador Paul Kavanagh, Ms Herald revealed that, in the year to the end of June, the Guinness Storehouse welcomed 18,908 Chinese visitors.

This figure is interesting because it is higher than the 18,000 visitors from China that are marked down as coming every year, and perhaps are an indication that efforts to boost visitor numbers to 50,000 in the next couple of years are paying fruit.

Technically, based on these figures, more people come to the Guinness Storehouse than come to Ireland.

These data are skewed by entries into Britain, but it is still entirely possibly that the Guinness Brewery is now like a pilgrimage point.

Chinese people are not big drinkers, except at Chinese New Year, but they enjoy a tipple and Guinness is black, and exotic, which goes down well with young people.

The Diagio people are happy that the Chinese seem to enjoy the Black Stuff. Among some Chinese quaffers in Hong Kong and Singapore, Guinness is considered as potent as tiger paw in the sexual performance stakes.

“We have seen good growth in the Chinese market, and the Tourism Ireland sales mission has provided a great platform for the industry to engage with this new market,” said Ms Herald.

“We have seen good growth in Chinese visitors, particularly the travel trade sector. We have Chinese-speaking staff, offer guided tours and audio tours in Chinese, have Chinese literature and accept Union Pay credit cards, and have a Chinese landing page on our website.”