Tourism marketing: Ireland 2011

http://www.conference-news.co.uk/news/2011/02/24/Ireland-raises-its-stake-30-per-cent-on-tourism-marketing/2843

***Get back tourist even after Euro increase i.e. more expensive to have holiday in Ireland


Ireland raises its stake 30% on tourism marketing

Despite the recession hitting Irish tourism hard, Tourism Ireland is to increase its investment in marketing by 30 per cent, with social and digital media at the centre of the new strategy.

Tourism Ireland launched its 2011 Marketing Plans for the British market at the Irish Embassy in London, 23 February, and CEO Niall Gibbons reminded the audience, including key UK event organisers, that tourism was worth €3bn to the Irish economy and delivered four per cent of GNP.

Gibbons said that the new marketing campaign would concentrate on differentiating the Ireland offer for tourism. He admitted that the perception of value had deteriorated with the strengthening of the euro by 40 per cent against sterling.

However, a 10 per cent swing back had helped make Ireland’s hotel room stock “some the best value in Western Europe,” Gibbons said, adding that in addition to Tourism Ireland increasing its marketing budget by 30 per cent, there has been a cut in travel tax from 10 to three per cent.

New Head of Great Britain at Tourism Ireland, Vanessa Markey, outlined three more planks to the “return to growth strategy”: creating a buzz; exciting the British travel trade and increased value. She said there would be a less fragmented approach to marketing, with the lion’s share of funding going to the target markets. Britain, she noted, now accounted for half of all Ireland’s tourism business.

“Digital campaigns and social media will play an important part in promoting Ireland as a business tourism destination,” Markey said. A recent Twitter campaign had attracted 33,000 tweets, she noted, and said a 60-second viral YouTube clip was to be released on St Patrick’s Day (17 March).

An iBot called Dara is also promised as part of the campaign to push Ireland’s literary heritage and Markey said a campaign of TV ads would run on ITV for the first time in five years. One million euros would be put into advertising in video on demand channel slots.

The new marketing activity follows last year’s introduction of a conference CO2 calculator iPhone app, enabling organisers to check the carbon emissions associated with their delegate travel; as well as the popular ‘GB Meet in Ireland’ blog.

Counsellor for Economic Affairs at the Embassy, Eugene Forde, said the new campaign came against a background of “very solid relations” developing between the UK and Ireland and he hoped this would be capped off in 2011 with a Royal visit.