LEADER

Capacity Building Seminar – Tourism

What’s Next for Irish Tourism?

Paddy Mathews Fáilte Ireland May 4 2017

Overview

• Irish Tourism

• Making Ireland stand out in a very competitive international tourism marketplace

• Two key approaches to successful tourism development

• Aligning LEADER and tourism

Tourism Drives Economic Growth

In 2016 • Tourism worth almost €7

billion • 220,000 people employed

(10% of total employment in Ireland)

• 8.8 Overseas visitors to Ireland (+10% in 2016)

• Overseas revenue worth €5 billion (+8%)

• Domestic spending worth €1.8 billion

Where Did Our Visitors Come from in 2016?

Why do visitors choose Ireland?

Future Tourism Growth

Future Growth will be focused around:

• Boosting the appeal of Ireland in the international travel market

• Adding value to what we have already

• Innovation

What Are We Trying to Do?

Help move Ireland from ‘a place to come some day to I must come now’

The Solution The First Response - Strengthening Brand Ireland

Ireland needs to stand out in the very busy international tourism marketplace

• Fáilte Ireland has built propositions of scale that help stand out among the competition which is all about getting the international consumers attention

Dublin is the vibrant capital city bursting with a variety of surprising experiences – where city living thrives side by side with natural outdoors

2 May 2017

Ireland’s Ancient East offers a personal experience of 5,000 years of Europe’s history. Your journey of discovery in this relaxing, off the beaten

track, lush beautiful landscape, that attracted warring settlers for millennia, will be made illuminating by stories

from the best storytellers in the world.

The Wild Atlantic Way on Ireland’s Western Coast off the Western Edge of Europe, captivates you with its

wild landscape that continuously shapes its living history; and engages you with its vibrant & creative communities, whose stories and culture stimulates you , so you are freed up to relax, enjoy and leave

feeling refreshed, renewed and uplifted.

The Second Response Understanding Our Visitors Interests and Needs so that our

Tourism Products reflect what Visitors are looking for

• Many companies launch new products and services as their strategy of increasing sales quickly, however this method is difficult to maintain. A more sustainable method of growth is customer centricity

• Rather than pushing a

product, a customer-centric business will have dedicated themselves to reorienting their operating model around the customer to ensure customer satisfaction and delivery of the experience brand.

Understanding who Our Visitors are Global Segmentation

• People are best differentiated in a marketing sense by values held and individual motivations to purchase rather than demographics or nationality

• Fáilte Ireland’s extensive research • The Segments are groups that want

broadly similar things from their holidays

• Will choose (& avoid) broadly similar destinations

• Makes it easier to target when marketing

• The segments are not: – In the same age groups or life-stage – Do not necessarily belong to the

same social class, though education level may be an important indicator

Key Target Segments

Primary Segments

• Culturally Curious

• Great Escapers

• Social Energisers

Secondary Segments

• Easygoing Socialisers

• Nature Lovers

• Spoil Us

• Top Tenners

• Break out of routine

• Reconnect with partner/family

• Private adventure

• Non-traditional experiences

Great Escapers want to Experience natural beauty in gentle isolation

• Immerse in Culture

• Explore and Discover more about themselves

• Engage with the locals

• Delve into history & learn

• Consume local specialties

Culturally Curious are active and curious, with a desire to connect to both culture and environment

• Variety of activities that are energetic and fun

• A variety of new experiences

• Convenient fun

Social Energisers want to experience local culture with an emphasis on music, food and drink. Immersive experiences in active environments

Culturally Curious Great Escapers

Social Energisers

Aligning LEADER and Tourism

• For tourism to thrive it needs vibrant rural communities and healthy landscapes

• Tourism relies fundamentally on a strong degree of convergence among rural development, agriculture, conservation and tourism policies particularly within the context of the Rural Development Programme

Aligning LEADER and Tourism

Fáilte Ireland is working to deliver sustainable tourism economic growth through a focus on the following outcomes : – increasing visitor dwell

time and spend – increasing employment

opportunities – supporting businesses – stimulating international

demand – Innovation

• Fáilte Ireland grant schemes do not have a non-capital element

• There is a need to align capacity building with tourism capital investments to ensure full intended impact for communities

Where Irish Tourism needs LEADER

Fáilte Ireland and LEADER Working Together

• Fáilte Ireland has seen real success where there are networks/clusters

• The establishment of a network has been transformational in developing successful tourism initiatives

• Networks have served as a catalyst to successful tourism development

Networking Capacity Building Capability Building Marketing

Tourism Success

Fáilte Ireland and LEADER Working Together

• Fáilte Ireland deeply respects the LEADER bottom-up approach to rural development

• Our role is not to help micromanage on the ground but to bring added value to what you do

• We help by having a strong strategic tourism direction which offers a framework to work within. This is working through using the brand propositions and consumer segmentation

• We have shared goals – we both want projects that have impact

Thank you