Declan Somers, founder of Galway Tour Company, talks about his day
I SET UP Galway Tour Company in 2007. I had just come back from six years in Japan, bringing tourists to Ireland.
The thing about Japanese tourists is that they’re very curious. They want to know everything and do everything, and I couldn’t get a bus driver prepared to put in the hours it took to satisfy them. So I got a coach-driving licence and started guiding them myself.
Now we have six coaches on the road and a crew of six. All our drivers are also guides. Each morning we drive around the BBs and hotels in the city, picking up guests, before heading for our central departure point, the coach depot. Then we head off either for a Cliffs-of-Moher-and- Burren or Connemara-and- Cong tour.
My office is in my pocket, in that I have a mobile phone with e-mail. I do all the administration side of the business on the fly and catch up with the paperwork at night.
Last year I took a lease on an internet cafe in Galway city centre instead of an office. This way all the drivers have a base they can come to – with coffee – and all our passengers can make low-priced phone calls or send e-mails home. Our office is a revenue earner, basically.
My favourite part of the job is to get out on the bus. It’s the best craic.
Our passengers are from all around the world, but you can make some generalisations. I love Americans, because they ask me things like: “What’s that guy doing over there, Declan?” Obviously, I don’t have a clue, so I tell them he’s a Nobel prize winner for being out standing in his field.
The Italians are great, but I don’t like them sitting right behind me, because they stop listening after a while and start talking, volubly. The French really get Connemara, and I just love that they get it.
When I first came home from Japan I bought a house in Connemara and tried to live the life of a hermit poet, but it didn’t work out.
Most of our tourists love the quirky details we can give them about movies such as The Quiet Man, The Field and now Marley & Me, with Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson.
I contacted the sheep herder who featured in Marley & Me and got him to stop the bus with his flock for a bunch of Austrians, just like in the movie.
The tours normally finish by about 6pm. I spend the evening in the internet cafe, catching up. By the end of the day on the bus I’m all buzzed up. It’s not every job where people come up, slap you on the back and say thanks all the time.
** Declan Somers is founder of Galway Tour Company
** In conversation with Sandra O’Connell