Meet the man whose job it is to sell Ireland as a vacation destination to North Americans - Joe Byrne, head of Tourism Ireland North America
“You can be a very busy fool when you have a job like mine in America,” says Joe Byrne, the Carlow man who heads up Tourism Ireland on this side of the Atlantic. “You can go after every target market and every city and all age groups and you can go after all interest levels and all hobbies.” But that would waste time and money, so Byrne and his colleagues, have done a lot of research to find out precisely who is most likely to actually travel to Ireland. They call them their “Best Prospects”.
“First of all they are baby boomers, so people 45 years of age and upwards,” he explains, “That’s not to say we don’t have younger people who go to Ireland – we do. And that’s not to say we don’t bandwagon every now and then on an opportunity to go after them. But in terms of where we put our focus, it’s baby boomers. We’re talking sight-seekers and culture seekers. These are the things they are most interested in doing when they are going on vacation to anywhere. They are college-educated and above-average income, defined as $75,000+ which eliminates a lot. And they are actually clustered in 15 cities in the United States. So that allows us to focus on these. They are interested in the finer things of life, and they are past visitors to Europe. Then we have three niche markets that we focus on. The first is golf, the second is business tourism, and the third is the Irish, and Scots-Irish diaspora.”
All in all that leaves a target market of about 12.5 million Americans. These are the people who have expressed an interest in travelling to Ireland at some time in their life. And Joe’s job is to turn that “some time” into now. This job, you would think, has not been made any easier by the developments of the last few years. Ireland has been receiving all the wrong kind of attention because of the banking crisis and the EU-IMF bailout. Open The New York Times or Vanity Fair or whatever publication you choose, and all you’ll find are references to crippling debts, severe austerity measures and an angry population worried for their future. You might think that convincing people to spend thousands of dollars on a trip there just got a whole lot more difficult. But luckily, that’s not the case.
“We actually got a bit worried about it,” says Joe. So worried in fact, that Tourism Ireland commissioned research to find out how all this negative publicity was impacting on perceptions of Ireland as a world-class vacation destination. And it brought good news. 81% of people had been immune to the storm of negativity that we Irish have been so focused on. “They asked: ‘What publicity? What problems are you talking about?’, said Byrne, adding that even among those who were aware of it all, there was encouraging news. “We asked would this affect your intention of travelling to Ireland, and there was a resounding No.” It appears that Brand Ireland is too strong to be shaken by a financial crisis.
Even as the IMF officials crunch the numbers at Government Buildings in Dublin, the attractions that make Ireland great are still there outside those four walls. The spectacular countryside, the terrific golf courses, the rich cultural and artistic traditions remain. “I would have to say that Ireland does have an extraordinarily strong brand image in the United States. Other countries which are far bigger than Ireland do not have the same level of awareness as a vacation destination,” says Joe Byrne. “They don’t have the same emotional attachment that Ireland has for an awful lot of Americans.
So in a fiercely competitive marketplace, how does he make Ireland stand out? “There is what we say, and there is the way we say it. And the two are integrated,” he explains, “And the way we say it emphasizes the distinctiveness about Ireland. There are no countries in the world that are promoting themselves that don’t say that it’s a beautiful place. And we’re saying Ireland is a beautiful place. And there is no country in the world that’s promoting itself here that’s saying its people are not friendly! And we’re saying the Irish people are friendly. But there are very few that can claim what is distinctively, uniquely, culturally rich and worthwhile about Ireland. And it’s based around the fact that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. There’s this concept of ‘the craic’. Of being interested and interesting and warm and welcoming and affording an opportunity to be more involved in an authentic experience. So it’s that tone of how we communicate that says an awful lot about what we are saying about the place as well.”
“It is built around the spectacular fantastically beautiful places for which we are known and loved, and the warm welcoming rich Irish people, but wrapped together in this unique distinctively Irish sense of fun and welcome and warmth and wit and mischief and roguery.”
Byrne says despite what many people think, the old leprechaun/blarney shtick doesn’t work anymore. “It doesn’t work in terms of persuading people to come to Ireland. It just doesn’t. And you would have to say there are probably a few nations involved: there’s Ireland, America and then there’s Irish America. One of the challenges that we have is that for Americans who are interested in coming to Ireland some time and should be interested, they get their impressions of Ireland from Irish-America rather than necessarily from Ireland itself. And a lot of that is what we call ‘paddy-whackery’ and not all of it is actually conducive to persuading someone who is interested or should be to actually go now. There is a certain stereotypical association which people believe is an association with Ireland, and a lot of it is to do with excessive drinking, and a lot to do with the paddywhackery that you see on St Patrick’s Day.”
Byrne says that while they bask in the limelight that St Patrick’s Day offers, they are keen to use the opportunity to display those aspects of the country which are strong enough to pull people to Ireland. “It’s the fact of Dublin being a city of literature, of Derry being the UK’s city of culture in 2013. It’s the spectacularly rich sporting and cultural events that take place. That’s actually what pulls people in.”
A trip to Ireland is a significant investment for any US holidaymaker – the average stay costs in the region of $5,000. And any difficulty in convincing people to travel over the past few years had less to do with Ireland’s economic problems, and more to do with the economic difficulties here in the States. But consumer confidence is now returning, and in a funny way Ireland’s problems, which have dramatically reduced hotel prices for example, can actually help convince people to go. “It means that now we have people who would traditionally have stayed in certain forms of accommodation who are now adding a night or two in a Castle hotel as well,” he said.
Another unexpected boost has come from President Obama’s decision to visit Ireland. “This an example of Ireland being in the spotlight through no credit of Tourism Ireland, but we can use the opportunity to focus on things that are grist to our mill, to highlight some aspects that we know our target market is interested in.” Obviously, one of those is the tracing of ancestry – an important motivating factor in the decision of many to travel to Ireland. “Irish ancestry is important, certainly. And there are forty million people with Irish ancestry in the States, give or take a couple of million,” says Byrne.
But perhaps surprisingly, only a third of American visitors to Ireland have Irish heritage, two thirds have no direct link, and Byrne says they are careful to remember this in their promotions. “In our marketing activities we want to be very careful that we don’t in any way send out a signal to people who don’t have Irish ancestry, that Ireland is a great location if you are Irish,” he says. “We want to send out a message that Ireland is a great vacation destination whether you are Irish, or whether you have different heritage. That does not stop us from sending out an over and above message to people of Irish ancestry, and we do that.”
For those of Irish descent who do go to Ireland, most are several generations removed. “They are not Irish born, only about 3% are Irish born, and only about 3% have actually a parent born in Ireland. So you are talking about grandparent or much further out than that. Therefore it’s a link, but it’s more notional.”
Byrne has been selling Ireland as a holiday destination for most of his adult life. A graduate of UCD, he worked briefly in RTE before taking those audio-visual skills to Bord Failte where he produced marketing videos. In the 1980s, the father-of-two was manager of Bord Failte’s Paris operations, with responsibility for all of southern Europe. In the late 90s he came to New York as head of Bord Failte here. But he was soon called back to Dublin, as a new initiative to promote the entire island of Ireland as a tourism destination was being put together as the peace process began to bear fruit. Renamed Tourism Ireland, the North-South co-operation “took off from day one” and after five years working in Dublin, Byrne was once again appointed to head up the efforts in the USA and Canada.
Over the years, he’s witnessed many changes in the tourism industry. Major challenges have hit travel agents and tour operators as people began to book and research their own holidays using the internet. Nonetheless they both remain crucial allies of Tourism Ireland in influencing the choice of destinations for holidaymakers. “The first time the escorted bus tour market was written off was 30 years ago,” says Byrne, “And then 20 years ago it was written off again. I’m happy to say there will be more people on escorted bus tours to Ireland in 2011 than in any other year in the past. Escorted bus tours have moved with the times. The stereotypical image of the coach tour is just that – a stereotype. They are much more active and participant than they were in the past.”
Tourism Ireland has also moved with the times. Its Facebook page has 120,000 fans and DiscoverIreland.com is the most visited European tourist board website in the US. Social media now plays a crucial part in spreading the word about Ireland. Joe says the balance of power is very much with the customer now, and real life testimonies are crucial in promoting a destination. “If I say something, people will say: ‘sure that fella is paid to say Ireland is a great destination!’ But if a Joe Byrne who is not working with Tourism Ireland says ‘I went to Ireland and had a great vacation’, it’s treated with greater credibility than anything I would say.”
Fortunately, Joe need not worry too much. Most of the comments on Facebook about Ireland are incredibly complimentary. And research conducted by Tourism Ireland shows an incredibly high satisfaction rating among those who make the trip to Ireland. “I handle directly all of the complaints that come in here,” says Joe Byrne, “I read all of the letters. And nobody has written to me in the past two years! I keep on looking at the post and nobody writes. We have really great satisfaction levels. I say that not to just wallow in it, but to say we do have a world class product that meets and exceeds expectations. And it does mean that we have an army of satisfied visitors. A big part of our current strategy is to turn that army into a proactive army of ambassadors and evangelists who will spread the word about Irish tourism.”
A version of this article first appears in the summer edition of Irish Connections magazine
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