Showing the Wild Atlantic Way to British tourists

Fáilte Ireland is to spend €500,000 over the next four weeks on an advertising campaign designed to attract British tourists to the stretch of the Wild Atlantic Way from Galway to Donegal.

The campaign, which is targeted at cities which have good access to the region, has been launched in conjunction with the five local authorities in the tourism area.

It urges prospective visitors to embrace the Wild Atlantic Way of Life and runs across different mediums.

“This will include a combination of ‘Out of Home’ advertising in prime commuter and shopping locations in key urban centres which have direct access into the region,” said a Fáilte Ireland spokeswoman. “This will be supported by a month-long radio partnership with the Bill Turnbull Show on Classic FM and a digital search engine optimisation campaign.

“Additionally, local taxis will be wrapped in high impact Wild Atlantic Way imagery in a number of the cities — including Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Manchester.

“This campaign allows us to raise international awareness of the route as a must- see visitor experience in key strategic locations which offer ease of access and great potential for the short break market,” said Fiona Monaghan, Fáilte Ireland’s head of the Wild Atlantic Way.

“The ease of access will be the key message and, in promoting the call of the Wild Atlantic Way in the Spring, we will be emphasising the short flight durations from the targeted cities to get our message across.”

Meanwhile, tourism chiefs are planning to cash in on an EastEnders spin-off that was filmed in Ireland.

Redwater, which centres on Albert Square favourites Kat and Alfie Moon, was shot in Dunmore East in Co Waterford when the country was bathed in weeks of near unbroken sunshine last June.

The agency’s half a million social media followers over the Irish Sea will also be targeted as the six-part series shows the sunny southeast living up to its name.

“It’s another great way to highlight the beautiful scenery of Ireland to millions of people across Britain, inspiring them to put Ireland on their holiday ‘wish list’ for 2017,” a spokeswoman for Tourism Ireland said.

BBC One’s Redwater tells the story of Kat and Alfie, played by soap stars Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie, after they arrive in the tiny fictional seaside village in Ireland to search for Kat’s long lost son. It is due to air in the spring.

While the producers have remained tight-lipped over the storyline, it is billed as a quest for truth that the locals would rather remained buried.

Danish director Jesper Nielsen, whose credits include Borgen, is directing while the series was written by former EastEnders boss Dominic Treadwell-Collins.

Redwater also stars homegrown stars such as Maria Doyle Kennedy, Fionnula Flanagan, Ian McElhinney, Angeline Ball, Peter Campion, and Stanley Townsend.

And the producers are understood to be conscious not to portray Ireland as a backwater, after a mistake almost 20 years ago on one of the few occasions when EastEnders was taken out of Albert Square.

Three episodes were based here in 1997 and led to hundreds of complaints and a near diplomatic fallout over images of wild animals on the streets and drunk and disorderly behaviour.