€50m bid to lure tourists from cities

TOURISM IRELAND is to spend €50 million on a campaign to attract more overseas visitors to rural locations.

The all-island tourism body said yesterday that a new global TV advertising programme, which will kick off in December, will be aimed at tourists likely to come here for sightseeing and cultural visits.

The targeted campaign will account for 25% of Tourism Ireland’s marketing spend over the next three years and will attempt to counteract the trend of the increasing number of visitors choosing Ireland solely for short city breaks.

Tourism Ireland said targeting sightseeing and cultural tourists would lead to a greater spread of tourism business outside cities.

These visitors were more likely to tour different parts of the country and tended to spend more than the average holidaymaker.

The campaign will focus on over-35s, with around half of the extra visitors expected to come from Britain.

Tourism Ireland chief executive Paul O’Toole said overall visitor numbers in the first six months of the year were strongly ahead of the same period in 2004, but the number of visitors for holiday purposes was marginally lower.

The biggest increases had been seen among people visiting friends and relatives and business people.

Mr O’Toole said the cost of getting to Ireland was very competitive but that tourists were often surprised by prices on arrival.

Ireland was no longer seen as a cheap holiday destination but concerns that holidays in Ireland were becoming unaffordable were overdone, he said.

The body said inflation was a concern and made it difficult to compete with low-cost destinations, but research it had commissioned showed Ireland performed well on the price of flights, car hire and, at certain periods, hotel accommodation.

The body also wants to make greater use of online initiatives to boost tourism sales. It operates 24 websites in 14 different languages and has committed to spending 10% of its marketing budget on electronic campaigns.

It recently awarded a €2.6m contract to a London-based company to develop new websites and said its web-based spending was now on a par with tourism organisations in Britain, France and Canada.