TOURISM IRELAND defied international forecasts yesterday by announcing plans to increase visitor numbers to the island of Ireland by 3 per cent next year.
It is aiming to attract 7.85 million visitors in 2010, compared with an estimated 7.6 million this year. This is despite predictions from the world tourism forecaster Tourism Economics that the number of tourists coming here will fall by 2 per cent in 2010.
Tourism Ireland is singling out Britain and Germany for additional investment, based on research which found those markets offered the best prospects.
It plans to “increase dramatically” the focus on St Patrick’s Day abroad, with campaigns in Britain, the US, Europe and Australia. Tourism Ireland aims to make the week-long St Patrick’s Day celebrations “one of the biggest consumer events in Britain in 2010”.
Other campaigns in Britain will highlight Irish literature, films, music and genealogy. In Europe, tourist sites such as the Cliffs of Moher and the Giant’s Causeway will be placed at the centre of its publicity drive.
Launching its 2010 marketing strategy in Dublin yesterday, Tourism Ireland chief executive Niall Gibbons said the World Tourism Organisation and Tourism Economics were suggesting more uncertainty for 2010.
“However, Tourism Ireland believes that working together with the industry, we can deliver growth,” he said. Getting back to growth in the prevailing circumstances would require a collective effort “on an unprecedented scale”, he added.
Mr Gibbons said at least €12.8 million would be spent on marketing in Britain next year.
Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism Martin Cullen said he accepted Britain was a challenging market due to the recession.
“It’s a bread-and-butter market for Ireland,” he said. “In a downturn, and particularly in a downturn in your key market, the one thing you don’t do is walk away.”
He said a lot of countries withdrew from marketing in certain countries after 9/11 and never got the business back.
Mr Cullen welcomed plans for the first national television advertising campaign in Germany next year. It will build on a recent promotion which brought 900 German travel professionals to Ireland. Mr Gibbons said German people took 60 million trips annually “and we only have half of 1 per cent of that”.
Asked about the impact of the €10 air travel tax, Mr Cullen said “in a perfect world obviously I’d prefer if there wasn’t a travel tax” and added that he had consistently fought for maintenance of funds to the tourism industry.
He said he did not want to pre-empt next week’s budget but “there are some clever things that we can do that can help the market to recover . . . All of those issues are obviously being looked at . . . they’re not finalised yet”.
He said there was “no doubt” that Ireland had priced itself out of the market at the height of the boom. “We priced ourselves out of the market on golf tours, no doubt about it,” he said. “That was not a sustainable position and there’s been huge moves to correct that.”
Asked about the threatened industrial action at Aer Lingus, Mr Cullen said it was “vital” that industrial action did not go ahead, “particularly at a time when the country needs everything to be functioning to its maximum to try and help the recovery of the economy”.
