KEVIN KEOGHfrom German travel company DerTour describes his day
I LIVE 70km outside Frankfurt in a wooded valley looking up at a castle. It’s very picturesque. I have been here since 1990. I came from Galway for a summer job, fell in love with a German girl and stayed ever since.
I’m at work at 8.30am. On the autobahns you drive at 180km/h to 200km/h an hour – it’s like driving on a landing strip, the roads are so great.
At the moment I’m helping organise the Travel Academy, bringing 700 German travel agents to Ireland. I’m working with Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland to get more focus on the Irish market from German travel agents. Around 95 per cent of the agents have never been in Ireland before, and it’s important to change that, as people sell what they know.
The German market has 82 million people, the largest in Europe, and Germans haven’t been hit too hard by the recession. DerTour’s clientele tends to be over 50, with average disposable income of ¤3,500 a month. It is part of German culture to save from a quarter to a third of your net salary, so they are buffered from recession that way, too.
The last time we held the Travel Academy in Ireland, in 1994, sales went up by 34 per cent. Ireland had to fend off Portugal, Abu Dhabi and Orlando, in Florida, to get it.
DerTour is the oldest tour operator in Germany. This year we will bring 40,000 people to Ireland. The top three places most Germans would like to see are Australia, New Zealand and then Ireland, so there is huge potential.
I don’t start the day by looking at e-mails. I have an e-mail allergy. I don’t give out my address and don’t put it on my card. I prefer people to ring, so I can talk to them; it’s more productive. It also means you don’t spend hours poring over 300 e-mails.
I meet with various managers to go through different sales figures, and discus what promotions we are running and what appointments we have with various tourist authorities.
I keep all meetings to one hour; it gets boring otherwise. I tell people that in advance, so they come prepared. No arriving with a blank sheet of paper – another thing I have an allergy to.
I have lunch in the canteen, and in the afternoon I might be discussing our catalogues. We produce 12.5 million of them every year and have just launched our winter one. Next month we’ll be starting into next summer’s.
As I get older I find I want to go to Ireland for longer and longer periods. One day I might live there again. I do see a lot of positives when I go back, not just good hotel and restaurant service but overall a very good quality of life.
** Kevin Keogh is vice-president of marketing and sales at the German travel company DerTour
** In conversation with Sandra O’Connell