The pictures that are worth millions to State's struggling tourism industry

ANALYSIS:Visits by the Queen and Barack Obama will generate up to €150m worth of publicity

SHE MAY have turned down the offer of a breakfast pint of Guinness, but Queen Elizabeth’s sojourn in Ireland has still produced a bumper crop of images destined to boost Ireland’s standing in its most important tourism markets.

The tourism industry estimates that the monarch’s four-day tour and Monday’s arrival of US president Barack Obama will generate up to €150 million worth of publicity worldwide.

Like thousands of city centre workers, Tourism Ireland chief executive Niall Gibbons had his travels hampered this week by the security-prompted traffic restrictions. But he’s certainly not complaining, recalling instead the despair last year when the Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud closed Irish air space, lending tourist hotspots such as Temple Bar an ominous emptiness. “Give me the road restrictions any day.”

For Gibbons, the importance of the Queen’s trip is reflected in the presence of the 1,200 journalists registered at the Dublin Castle media centre, all waiting for the monarch to unveil her next hat.

The Dublin Airport Authority, meanwhile, executed the biggest logistical operation in its history on Wednesday when about 16,000 Portuguese football supporters arrived for the Europa League final at the Aviva Stadium. The atmosphere was “like a carnival”, said airport spokeswoman Siobhán Moore.

The atmosphere has not been carnival-like for Ireland’s tourist businesses in recent years. As the global economy lurched into crisis, tourism revenues plunged almost 30 per cent to €4.6 billion last year. Some two million fewer visitors arrived on the island of Ireland than during the 2007 peak, when nine million people graced our shores.

And it’s the slower stream of British tourists that hurts the most.

To reverse these misfortunes, Tourism Ireland, the all-island body responsible for marketing Ireland abroad, is spending €17 million promoting Ireland in Britain this year, a rise of 30 per cent on last year’s budget in this market.

“We’re advertising on the big TV channels for the first time in years – ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and on satellite,” says Gibbons. A radio campaign highlighting the main spots on the royal itinerary will have a reach of more than five million British listeners.

While the agencies expect Ireland’s high-profile visitors to drive tourism revenues over the long term, they’re also hopeful of a quick boost from Britain. “An awful lot of people are looking for a short break and haven’t made up their minds,” says Gibbons.

The idea behind the Obama campaign, meanwhile, is to exploit the president-led transatlantic fondness for “roots tourism”. The agency has developed prepackaged video footage and newspaper advertorials featuring interviews with genealogists and historians.

Shaun Quinn, chief executive of Fáilte Ireland, which works with tourism providers in the Republic, is unequivocal about the benefit of the visits. “For a small country with limited marketing resources, this is an amazing opportunity, and it’s noticeable that the media in the UK are playing up the tourism angle,” he says.

There are, broadly, three strands to the British campaign. The literary strand belongs to Dublin, with advertisements highlighting the capital’s status as Unesco City of Literature and the Queen’s gander at the Book of Kells.

The ads promote the Rock of Cashel as symbolic of Ireland’s heritage offering, while, for Cork, the food angle is being played up with a little help from the Queen’s visit to the city’s English Market.

“Getting outside Dublin was very important, because the British market has in recent years been very much focused on the city mini-break,” says Quinn.

The number of people who come to Ireland is ultimately influenced by the economies in their home countries, which means that, to a large extent, the hoped-for reversal in Irish tourism is out of the State’s control. Currency exchange factors and consumer spending trends loom large.

“The four biggest markets – the UK, US, France and Germany – account for 80 per cent of our market. France and Germany have turned a corner but the British market is still sluggish because of the depressed state of the economy there,” says Quinn.

The British staying at home may not be all bad news, however, as Ireland is often considered akin to a domestic holiday. “We could actually take a slice of their staycation market.”

The competition is tough. Ireland competes for tourists’ custom with several regions of the UK, all of which have their own marketing budgets – Gibbons cites the £30 million three-year spend by the Yorkshire tourist board, Welcome to Yorkshire, as an example.

Revenues from tourism can be hard to predict, and the industry estimates of €150 million worth of publicity from the May visits is based on the equivalent cost of buying ad space. The number of people who actually follow through and visit Ireland as a result is difficult to measure. “You can never put a finger on it and say they came because of the Queen,” says Gibbons.

Overall, Tourism Ireland’s budget has not been increased, simply reallocated. Notwithstanding both the previous and the current Government’s rhetoric about the economic importance of tourism as an export business, the agency’s financial muscle remains bound by the fiscal crisis. Its total budget this year is €45 million, down slightly on 2010.

Meanwhile, the Central Statistics Office has been forced to cut back on the regularity of its tourism statistics.

Everyone has their own ideas about how Ireland can sell itself, given the constraints. Events-led marketing, a key part of the official strategy, does help, says Noel Sweeney, managing director of tourism consultancy TTC International. “Any major event has two benefits. Firstly, it heightens the profile of the country, and secondly, there is the specific revenue boost that comes from the visitors that arrive for that event. Normally the first benefit is higher, because the second benefit is pretty finite.”

Even events such as the Europa League final, which saw fans from Portuguese clubs Porto and Braga flown in and out on chartered aircraft with little hanging around to kiss the Blarney Stone, have spin-off potential, he adds. This is because tourists tend to be more influenced by the travel recommendations of friends and family than they are of official advertising campaigns.

Coverage of the Queen’s visit has not been disproportionately focused on the protests, Sweeney believes. “I think there’s been much more a theme of celebration.”

The Obama visit will be less formal in tone, he notes.

Perception that Ireland is bad value for money lingered long after the fact, according to Sweeney, and indeed Tourism Ireland surveys indicate a turnaround in feedback on value for money over the last 18 months. “Visitors feel we are much more affordable than we used to be,” says Gibbons.

Innovations such as marketing in sterling prices and packaging accommodation with activities such as cookery lessons, even falconry, have increased. “We’re not just selling on the basis of price.”

Vat reduction measures and the ditching of the travel tax are positive moves, Quinn confirms, but tourism businesses are still operating on very thin margins, he cautions.

Happily, Tourism Ireland’s research also suggests that the Irish are still regarded as friendly sorts who won’t chase tourists all the way to boarding gates at the first opportunity.

Trevor White, architect of the City of a Thousand Welcomes volunteer scheme and director of the forthcoming Little Museum of Dublin, believes these are cheap and easy commodities to exploit.

“There’s a massive public determination to harness the reputation we already have for friendliness and conviviality.”

Bigger hitters: five events from the tourism sector’s calendar

SOLHEIM CUP

September 2011

The women’s equivalent of Ryder Cup takes place at Killeen Castle, Co Meath, from September 23rd to the 25th.

The Europe vs USA golf tournament is expected to pull in visitors from Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and airline seat capacity from those countries will increase 33 per cent around the event.

Tourism Ireland has been hosting golf tour operators from Scandinavian and Nordic countries since 2009 in a bid to get Irish courses on the radar of golf tourists there, in particular in the Swedish market.

INTERNATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS

June 2012

The 50th International Eucharistic Congress – an international gathering of Catholics – takes place in Dublin from June 10th to 17th next year. Its aim is “to promote an awareness of the central place of the Eucharist in the life and mission of the Catholic Church”, the official website states.

Some 13,000 visitors are expected to come to Ireland for the event, which was last held here in 1932. On that occasion, it commemorated the death of St Patrick – one of the most important figures in Irish tourism.

TITANIC CENTENARY

March-May 2011/April 2012

Belfast’s Titanic 100 festival will culminate on May 31st – the centenary of the launch of the luxury Olympic-class liner built by engineers in the city’s Harland & Wolff shipyards.

The Titanic Quarter, still in development, will get a second chance to capitalise on anniversaries in 2012, which marks the centenary of the ship’s voyage and tragic fate. Any maritime history or Hollywood-influenced tourists will be encouraged to venture further afield to attractions such as the Giant’s Causeway.

VOLVO OCEAN RACE

July 2012

The round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race sets sail from Alicante in Spain on October 29th this year, but it is the finish in Galway in early July 2012 that is the big coup for Irish tourist agencies, with the event set to be many more times lucrative than the use of the port as a stopover in the 2008-09 race.

The official website for the race notes how Galway offers “a medley of contrasts – the wildest and remotest of countryside teamed with one of Europe’s most vibrant and popular cities”.

LONDON OLYMPICS

July/August 2012

An estimated 350,000 overseas visitors will make the trip to the games and Tourism Ireland’s Niall Gibbons says a co-ordinated visa waiver system with the UK will give Ireland “the opportunity to piggyback” on both the influx of sport fans and the “significant amount of displacement” expected to occur.

In other words, it wants to attract the tourists who would have headed to London in summer 2012, but are forced by higher accommodation prices to bypass the British capital for other destinations.