FRIDAY INTERVIEW: Niall Gibbons, Tourism Ireland:TOURISM IRELAND is going back to basics. The main objective for the body responsible for selling the State's attractions abroad is to bring in more visitors, and the focus of that effort will be on the traditional markets of Britain, the US, France and Germany.
“We have a lot of work to do,” concedes Niall Gibbons, the agency’s chief executive. In terms of pure numbers, tourism peaked along with virtually everything else in 2007 – at nine million overseas visitors.
It had grown from seven million at the start of the decade, but those gains were wiped out during the subsequent three years. By 2009, the last period for which there are official figures, it had dropped to 7.6 million. While not confirmed, last year it is estimated that the figure had fallen to 6.6 million.
Some of the reasons are not hard to find. Our scenery and culture didn’t suddenly lose their sheen, people just couldn’t afford to visit and enjoy them.
“We’ve seen a global credit crunch and economic crisis,” Gibbons says. “That has had a dramatic impact on tourism worldwide. People are looking at their discretionary income. People are going to eat food, but travel is something that they can pare back on. There was a big impact on global tourism, particularly within Europe.”
That has a knock-on effect on consumer confidence. He points out that, in Britain, our biggest market, it has been on the decline for a while. The number of people generally travelling abroad from that market has fallen back to 2001 levels.
“That’s a big factor in itself. You have the same number of tourist boards competing for fewer people,” he says.
Another – pretty basic – problem is getting here. About 85 per cent of all visitors arrive by air, but there are fewer aircraft flying in and out of the State – the number of seats has fallen from 500,000 a week in 2008 to 425,000. That limits where the agency can go to sell the country.
But Gibbons is not sitting in his office in Dublin blaming the recession. He acknowledges that value for money became the industry’s Achilles’ heel, particularly at the height of the boom when escalating domestic demand meant that people forgot about overseas visitors.
Some elements of that, such as exchange rates, are beyond anyone’s control, but others are not. And it looks like the industry is addressing at least some of the issues. Gibbons says that Ireland now has the cheapest hotels in Europe, and restaurants are following fast. “They’re working with us and are keen to get the price message out there,” he observes.
However, there’s more to do. Recent surveys have shown that 66 per cent of visitors from Britain considered value for money to be a problem last year, compared with 30 per cent of Americans and 36 per cent of Europeans.
That figure was an improvement of 10 percentage points on 2009 impressions and the satisfaction ratings have improved again since then, but Gibbons says that the agency can’t really let up when it comes to such perceptions. “We still need to push hard to get the message out there,” he says.
The focus on the four major markets is not surprising, given that between them they account for three-quarters of all visitors here.
“In Britain, it’s about getting back with the big brand Ireland message,” he says. “We’re going back on television in a big way. The campaign will run in March, April, May, June, August, September. It’s running later than previously because there’s a much later booking pattern.”
Even in the middle of the season, he says, some accommodation providers have found themselves with 15 per cent occupancy for the month ahead, and ended with over 80 per cent . . . and a massive sigh of relief.
The agency has also discovered that a lot of British visitors fall into the 25-35 age group, and so it turned to Facebook and Twitter in a bid to woo more of these. The change of approach has made an impact. Ireland now has 230,000 friends on Facebook, and that’s growing at about 3,000 a day. “If we were a country on Facebook, we’d be the biggest in the world,” Gibbons says.
Focus group research in the four key markets, which also used the internet, came up with encouraging findings.
“All the perceptions that are coming across are very positive,” he points out. “These included fun, friendly, relaxed, beautiful, photogenic.”
He acknowledges that many participants in this research may not have been here, and that a visit could change their perceptions, but he argues that the agency has to work to attract those people who have not visited before.
“They have perceptions, whether we like it or not. We have to try and play into those to some extent,” he says.
There were a lot of concerns about other people’s impression of Ireland three months ago, just after the EU and International Monetary Fund had bailed out the Republic and its government was travelling on fumes.
Tourism Ireland’s own internal monitoring showed that the economy’s travails did not deter people from travelling to Ireland, and in some ways, suggested that it might once again offer value for money.
The agency is an all-Ireland body. Its €43 million budget is jointly funded by the Government and Northern Assembly. Surprisingly, its biggest marketing push only uses €1.5 million of that sum, because everyone else does the rest of the work. That marketing push centres on St Patrick’s Day, when, among others, the New York authorities shut off part of Fifth Avenue for the city’s parade and, for an entire day, everything goes green.
Other tourist boards worldwide turn the same colour with envy. Every Irish Embassy gets to meet leading local figures.
“It gets us in doors that wouldn’t normally be open to us. Prime ministers and ministers turn out to celebrate us,” Gibbons says. “It’s the perfect platform to get those large-scale messages out there.”
Just how much impact those messages will have remains to be seen. Gibbons points out that the State needs to see global economic growth, confidence and access working in its favour. A fair wind could deliver up to 8 per cent growth, or the absence of one or two factors could hinder it.
“It’s very early days yet, but we’ve seen that traffic coming in to Dublin airport in the first month of the year, which is not really a barometer of anything, is up 2 per cent,” he says.
“The number of British visitors coming in to Dublin airport was up 5 per cent in January, but I wouldn’t start getting excited about Europe yet.”
On The Record
Name:Niall Gibbons
Position:Chief executive, Tourism Ireland
Why is he in the news?From the St Patrick's Day launchpad, the agency is pushing to reverse the decline in visitors to these shores.
Background:An accountant, he previously worked as director of corporate services with the Marine Institute.
Family:Married to Marion with four children.
Hobbies and interests:He says he concentrates on family outside of work.
Something that won't surprise:He holidays with his family in Ireland each year.
Something that might surprise:He cycles to work and to meetings.
