Unique US-Irish relationship delivers sustained tourism trade

Joe McNamee hears industry views on how US-Irish tourism figures have rebooted after the global Covid dip

Busy scenes at Terminal 2, Dublin Airport, which serves the USA, among other destinations. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

Irish US Tourism Dividend For generation after generation, the US has been the lodestar for Irish emigrants and the Irish diaspora (including descendants of emigrants) is now estimated globally at 70m and that includes 42m Americans claiming Irish ancestry, more than one in five white Americans. 

Joe McNamee looks at how the special US-Irish relationship continues to deliver tourism dividends for both nations. Picture: Denis Minihane

It is one of the top three US ancestries, second only to German-Americans and the relationship between the world’s most powerful and richest country and our own little rain-drenched rock on the very western fringes of Europe is both special and unique, all the more so for the very obvious disparities between the two.

And it is that special relationship that has been quite crucial to the post-pandemic revival of the US-Irish tourism trade — in 2022, we welcomed back 7m tourists, a 73% recovery on 2019 figures and a staggering 1.5m of those visitors were North Americans.

Eoghan O’Mara Walsh, CEO, Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, says: “We have performed much better than expected and the star performer was the North American market. The main reason was that Aer Lingus restored capacity and [Dublin Airport’s] Terminal 2 has become a hub once more. We expect the same kind of numbers again this year. The dollar is strong which is always good for business and there is still a lot of pent up post-pandemic demand and deferred bookings still in the system.

“Post Brexit Britain is maybe heading into recession and with a weak Britain [which normally supplies a large percentage of annual tourists], it is critical that the North Americans continue to come. They tend to spend seven to 10 days in Ireland, visiting cities and then they tend to tour the regions.” 

For years, we have clung to the clichéd old image of North American tourists as ‘tour bus Yanks’, ferried between a series of tourism sites and various hotels en routes, seeing most of the country through a coach window. But that is starting to change and the traditional home of that old school American visitor, Killarney, which O’Mara Walsh describes as the “bellwether” of Irish tourism, is reflecting that change as its hospitality offering evolves from predominantly large hotels to an increase in smaller boutique hotels and more fine dining restaurants catering to independent tourists, both native and from abroad.

“The coach tour market it still quite a strong market,” says O’Mara Walsh, “still very solid and robust and a lot of the Americans enjoy the pre-programmed tours, everything arranged, tours, events, hotels but that is increasingly an older sector of the market.” 

Another huge fillip to the two-way traffic between Ireland and the US has been the evolution of Ireland as a transatlantic hub, with Dublin at its heart, having long superseded Shannon as the pivotal Irish link for transatlantic travel and this repositioning of Dublin Airport as a European hub to the US has been crucial, with many US tourists to and from Europe using it as a stepping stone and often stopping off for a few days in Ireland en route.

Tim Magee is the owner-director of Host & Co, Ireland’s leading food and hospitality public relations company, operating in Ireland and abroad and whose Irish client list reads like a whose who of Irish food and hospitality, including hotels such as The Shelbourne, The K Club, The Lodge at Ashford Castle, The Cliff at Lyons and restaurants including Kai, Cliff Townhouse, The Tannery and Michelin-starred Aimsir, Restaurant Chestnut and Ox Belfast. and the Cliff House in Ardmore.

“You can see the demographic of US tourists to Ireland is changing as well,” says Magee, “I grew up in Shannon besides Durty Nellie’s and the Shannon Shamrock. Back then, those tourists were older, very often it was a once in a lifetime trip which also meant they were coming for two or three weeks and they were going to all the traditional stopping-off points, Killarney, Glendalough, Bunratty and so on.

“Now you very often see a younger and wealthier tourist drawn by an Ireland seen as pristine, wilder—even wilder than it actually is—and I think that you see more engagement with the cities, which wasn’t the case before.

“We made a big leap forward with our hotel product over the last 20 years, it has improved dramatically over a very short space time. The hotels on this island, a lot of them were built in the Celtic Tiger years, there were a lot of high-end fit outs and a lot of high end operators came in and raised the standards dramatically in a very short short space of time.

“You now have a younger more discerning American traveller, not all tied into [the genealogical connections of the American-Irish in] Boston or New York. They are not tied into tours and carefully managed groups, they are spending more and more time in cities and it’s not just Dublin but also Cork, Limerick, Galway and even the towns, places like Westport and Ennis.

Margaret Ryan is a seasoned hospitality marketing guru specialising in the tourism, leisure, lifestyle and hospitality sector and her clients include Park Hotel Kenmare, Dromquinna Manor, tourism bodies, country houses and various other hospitality operations.

“The year ahead looks excellent, no ifs or buts or maybes, and the dollar versus the euro helps. Transatlantic access is a huge factor. There are loads of direct flights from all the major exit cities in the US. A lot of our business, some would be just coming to Ireland but a lot would also be doing Italy, France, and the UK as well. 

"Travel agents are still a thing in the US and right now they are telling us there is a lot of demand for Balmoral, Edinburgh, Westminster, basically, a combination of The Crown and wanting to follow the route of the queen’s funeral and that’s of huge benefit to Ireland as well, because they’ll come here for a few days as well, to the country houses and the castles and the luxury hotels.

Then you have the legendary Navy-Notre Dame game [taking place in the Aviva, in August], the whole marketing of that. There’s still a nervousness around Covid—they’re not doing the Great Wall of China and are nervous of the ‘sexier’ long haul destinations.” 

Even though the Park, in Kenmare, would have been a favoured stopping-off point for richer Irish-Americans in years gone by, the profile of their US guests is also changing. 

“If you went back probably as far as ten years ago, a lot of our visitors had Irish connection, now there’s an awful lot coming who don’t have that, they are coming to Europe and Ireland as a destination without any heartstring ties. On the other hand, we would have seen a huge increase in three generations coming together, grandparents still holding Irish ties, bringing their children and grandchildren and that’s a big boost.

“But many of the younger US visitors have no Irish connections and they are coming for our lifestyle programmes, the hikes, the yoga, the wellness, the greenness, the fresh air — they are not as caught up in the old shamrocks and the pints of Guinness. They use Terminal 2 as a hub to go elsewhere in Europe but equally, we find Cork airport is very important for the South West as the North American market also uses Heathrow as a hub to and from other parts of Europe and thinks nothing of skipping over to Cork, and the South West for the whole castle experience, Ashford, Dromoland, the Wild Atlantic Way, that all has a huge resonance. Some could have been to Dublin before and want to try something else.”