TOURISM IRELAND is hoping that Ronan Keating will work his magic for the ailing Irish tourism industry, with a new 13-week Sunday afternoon radio show in the UK that will be sponsored by the cross-border body. According to Fáilte Ireland, visitor numbers from Britain have dropped by 16 per cent, yet it remains our most important market, accounting for 50 per cent of all visitors and 40 per cent of tourism revenue.
Keating’s ambitions to become a broadcaster and Tourism Ireland’s desire to raise Ireland’s profile with a younger audience have joined to create a show on Magic 105.4, in which Keating will mix easy-listening music and light chat with his own take on Ireland alongside Tourism Ireland ads telling British listeners what great value Ireland is for a holiday.
The new radio show, which launches this weekend, is part of what Tourism Ireland hopes is a fresher approach. During Jedward-mania, it created tongue-in-cheek radio ads “apologising” to the British people for the two Irish X-Factor contestants. The Discover Ireland brand also has a presence on YouTube, with quirky videos made by young people.
Fáilte Ireland stated in its end of season review, published yesterday, that it’s going to be another “tough year” after an “ugly year” (2009) when revenue declined by almost 17 per cent to €5.2 billion, its lowest level since 2004. Revenue has also been hit by hotels cutting their rates, and many businesses are now expressing deep concern about the continuing high cost of local authority charges, energy and insurance, the report added.
Fáilte Ireland, whose remit is marketing the Republic of Ireland, is launching a major home holidays campaign to encourage the Irish to spend their tourism euros at home. Yet attracting overseas visitors has never been more important. Tourism Ireland, which represents Ireland North and South, has launched a major advertising blitz in the US and is also targeting Germany.
Why Germany? Because the Germans take 60 million trips per year, making them the most important market in Europe for Ireland. But as a destination, Ireland is losing out to Scotland, which is perceived to offer better value and a more cultural experience, says Klaus Buehring, business unit manager at TUI Wolters.
The company sends 5,000 Germans to Ireland every year, each traveller spending about €500 on travel and accommodation and €400 on the ground.
“The perception is that Ireland is different for the worse – in people’s minds. It’s still a lovely country, but there are some things that are unexpectedly different. Modern roads and hotels, it’s a changed way of life, I wouldn’t blame the Irish for wanting that, but from a tourism perspective it’s difficult,” Buehring says.
In Scotland, the golf is cheaper, there are good three-star hotels that are better priced, especially considering the euro to sterling exchange rate. Ireland, says Buehring, has become a victim of Celtic Tiger excess and European-funded motorways and tax incentive driven four- and five-star luxury hotels, losing the charm that used to attract the German tourist, who wants a good three-star hotel with a country house feel.
Ireland is harder to get to and more expensive to eat and drink in – a pint that costs €3 in Bremen costs €5 in the Republic – so it needs something special to make it worth the extra effort and expense, says Buehring. In the past, the individual German traveller enjoyed the experience of Ireland’s narrow bumpy roads going through villages, where asking for directions in the local shop or pub was an adventure in itself. “Now motorways cross the country, which is good for travelling but bad for tourism, you get from A to B, but you don’t get to know the country by zooming down a motorway,” he says.
There is no question that the standard of accommodation in Ireland is higher than in Scotland and the UK, he adds, but plush four- and five-star tax-incentive palaces with rooms that look the same as they do in any hotel around the world lack the intimacy and homeliness that Germans want. German tourists like to practise their English and have become disillusioned by staying in Irish hotels where the staff are not Irish and may have poor English, limiting their opportunities to converse.
There are many Irish hotels boasting fabulous spas, but Germans don’t come to Ireland to spend time in spas, he says. Golf is no longer a major draw for the Germans, who prefer golfing holidays in Portugal, Tunisia and Turkey where the courses are excellent and cheaper than in Ireland.
“Scotland and the UK are very competitive. Prices have decreased by 10-13 per cent and Irish prices have not fallen as much. Prices have come in the right direction, but not enough. Ireland has become too expensive, hotel prices have come down, but the extra costs – meals, drinks – holidaymakers feel in their pockets. The perception is that Ireland is quite expensive and becoming more expensive every year.”
Scotland’s marketing has appealed to the Germans, who have no sentimental attraction to Ireland and aren’t looking for their family trees. The Edinburgh Military Tattoo festival in August is heavily marketed in Germany and attracts the culture element of the tourism market.
“There’s a chance that the St Patrick’s Festival might go in that direction – but it’s too early in the year, when it’s cold and rainy. There’s no cultural event in Ireland like that.”
Listening to Buehring’s honest account, based on feedback from his clients, it’s clear that Tourism Ireland and Discover Ireland are facing an uphill battle, yet Niall Gibbons, chief executive of Tourism Ireland remains optimistic. “We had a record 472,000 visitors from Germany in 2008. In moving forward, we have done a root and branch review of the German market looking for untapped potential. German’s have a pretty good perception and image of Ireland, but they struggle to interpret what that actually means. It’s a green haze. To penetrate that, we have three approaches, this month we’re going on national TV in Germany; we had 900 German travel professionals here in November – mainly based in Kerry and they travelled the length and breadth of Ireland.”
But how difficult is it going to be to challenge the prevailing view that Ireland is an expensive destination that lacks the charm of the old days? Charlie Sinnott, who owns Blooms Hotel in Temple Bar, Dublin, and the Connemara Coast Hotel, says that the cost of staying in an Irish hotel has been cut to the bone and that many tax-incentive hotels are effectively operating below cost, propped up by banks, resulting in a gross oversupply of accommodation.
It’s a trend appreciated by Irish consumers, who represent 65 per cent of the hotel market here. This is a statistic that may have lulled some hotels dependent on the domestic market into a false sense of security because when tourism numbers began to fall after 2001, the Celtic Tiger market for country breaks made up for it – but not any more as Irish people cut back on leisure spending.
Sinnott would like to see the airport tax scrapped and a Farmleigh-style conference for tourism, where Government departments would be involved to hear how the practical problems of the industry would be addressed. We should be sending Irish sports people and artists overseas as ambassadors, he says, to target niche markets in Europe and in Germany in particular.
Sinnott thinks we need to build specific cultural festivals, with their programmes organised well in advance giving tourists a chance to plan and the organisers involved in visiting overseas markets to give potential tourists a taste of what they’ll experience. He’d like to see Irish athletes giving talks abroad to people interested in adventure, activity and walking holidays.
“While Tourism Ireland and Fáilte Ireland do an excellent job, the industry will need to be more active than ever before, supporting the activities of Tourism Ireland and Fáilte Ireland,” says Sinnott. “We need to involve more culture and sports as conduits to niche markets – involving these people more in promoting Irish tourism.
“We should go out there and engage in promotional activities that focus attention on Ireland as a destination, not just necessarily through travel agents. I’d like to see Irish musicians playing in the streets in Munich, Irish artists showing their paintings, readings going on in bookshops, Macnas characters in the streets – events that focus on the rich cultural diversity we have to offer. In the UK market we have to get out there and make a lot more noise in places like Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, the Welsh ports linking to Rosslare.”
The greatest problem faced by people providing a tourism product is Ireland’s higher cost base compared to elsewhere in Europe and the oversupply of accommodation.
“We are more expensive, we have a higher minimum wage, local authority charges, in every respect our costs are greater, and that filters through to the price that one can economically charge. Our prices are so low at this stage the businesses themselves are running at an uneconomic level,” Sinnott says.
John Concannon, director of Fáilte Ireland, believes that “the price of getting here and staying here is very competitive. Now we have to work with the food and beverage sector to improve.” There’s also the matter of targeting niche markets. “We have to be very analytical – we have to research and change with consumer taste, there is a huge amount of choice out there for tourists and we have to look at how are we going to stand out from the crowd to make someone click a mouse and make a booking.”
John Brennan, owner of the Park Hotel, Kenmare, Co Kerry, believes that attractive websites are not enough.
“The industry needs to go to markets and wear out shoe leather, meeting prospective markets face-to-face. For the last number of years the Irish tourism product has been in somewhere in the region of 75 per cent dependent on a domestic market. . . it is very difficult to go back into the overseas market and expect it to return overnight. Having said that, the desirability of Ireland is extremely strong in the overseas market. We have a huge number of pluses going for us – our environment, the product itself is in very good condition, we have good access considering that we are an island on the west coast of Europe – every city in the US flies into Heathrow. What we need to do is to define what the Irish experience is, to ensure it is packaged attractively and go selling.”
BRENNAN WOULD LIKE TO SEE people in the Irish tourism industry returning to the practices of the old Bord Fáilte, which would send representatives to target markets, showing them a good time with Irish hospitality and convincing them that that’s what their customers would receive here.
“The greatest thing Ireland has going for it is its people and hospitality. You cannot bottle it, or put it on a computer. If you get 60 tourism professionals into a city and pull journalists and travel agents into a room, no other country will impress them as well as the Irish with our music, sense of fun, honest handshakes and eyeballing them like they never were before. I think there are very good people in the industry, but they have never seen how the old brigade worked – put them all on a plane, let the younger see what the older ones are doing.”
The fact that Ireland is more expensive isn’t a deal-breaker for tourists who want a genuinely different experience, he believes.
“The wonderful thing about the product we have is that it works; when people come, there is a 96 per cent satisfaction rate. We have to get out of the mindset of selling it cheap. There is a market who want a good experience and don’t mind paying for it – it’s because Ireland is an experience beyond price. People have less time for holidays now and when they do have their holidays, they want it to be real and authentic, and that’s what we can offer.”
COUNTING THE COST
12% decline
We had some 6.55m visitors in 2009 – a decline of 12 per cent on 2008
4.4% GDP
In the Republic of Ireland, tourism comprises 4.4 per cent of GDP and in Northern Ireland, 2 per cent of GDP
Who’s not coming?
British visitors down 16 per cent
US visitors down 8 per cent
Is the worst over?
Ireland's four main markets – the US, France, Germany and the UK –
are predicted to fallby a further two per cent in 2010
- Source: CSO; Fáilte Ireland
