Tourism Facebook site ranks fifth in the world
Industry experts yesterday said the use of social media needed to be mastered in order to attract travellers to Irish shores.
There are now over 250,000 fans of Tourism Ireland on the social networking site Facebook.
Ireland is now the fifth most popular tourism destination in the world on Facebook for fans, after Croatia (260,000), Spain (280,000), New Zealand (310,000) and Australia (1.4 million).
Mark Henry, Tourism Ireland’s central marketing director, said: “Whenever we ask people what most influences their choice of holiday destination, word of mouth is always the number one factor. Social media now allows word of mouth about a holiday destination to reach a truly global audience. For that reason, Tourism Ireland aims to get people talking about their positive experiences of our island and the many great things to see and do here.”
According to Tourism Ireland, the Facebook ‘multiplier effect’ means the organisation is seeing growth of about 2,500 fans per day.
And the online social networking tourism website has fans in 14 countries around the globe — including Britain, the US, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, India, Japan, New Zealand and the Gulf Countries.
Online fans are putting up their favourite spots to visit and communicating with other readers on the site about where to visit.
In addition, the organisation responds to messages posted about the island of Ireland, giving suggestions, offers from tourism partners, links and advice to potential visitors.
“Having a fanbase of this size allows Tourism Ireland to communicate over 3.5 million messages about the island of Ireland each month to prospective visitors,” Mark Henry said.
