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Tourism chiefs target Australia

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Tourism Ireland's Australian manager Diane Butler helps launch th enew tourism strategy with CEO Niall Gibbons (centre) and Tourism Minister Paschal Donohoe.

Tourism Ireland’s Australian manager Diane Butler helps launch th enew tourism strategy with CEO Niall Gibbons (centre) and Tourism Minister Paschal Donohoe.

 

Tourism Ireland has identified Australia as a key growth market over the next five years.

More and more Australians are visiting the country and TI chief Niall Gibbons wants to build on the progress that’s been made.

Speaking from Dublin, Mr Gibbons said Aussies were
valuable tourists for Ireland because they stay longer and spend more.

“We’ve seen a 40 per cent
increase in the number of
people visiting from Australia over the last number of years – up to 180,000,” he said.

“So it’s a big number, and what’s often overlooked here is the fact that these people from Australia stay longer and spend more.”

The average visit to Ireland by a British tourist is just four days and for American tourists it is nine days.

“But for Australian visitors, it’s 13 days,” he said.

Australia is now Ireland’s sixth largest market and Mr Gibbons would like to see a further 20 per cent growth in numbers by 2017.

Key to achieving this growth is travel connectivity and the emergence of one-stop flight options into Dublin from Australia has been a major
factor, he says. “We’re really pleased with the improved connectivity. There’s 28 flights a week now coming into Dublin airport from the Middle East through Etihad and Emirates. Relationships with airlines are very important to us.”

Many Irish tourist attractions have seen significant increases in the numbers of Australian visitors – Titanic in Belfast, for instance, has seen a 45 per cent increase in visitors from Australia.

Mr Gibbons is also very conscious of the importance of the so-called VFR (visiting friends and relatives) market.

The emigration boom since 2007 has led to increasing numbers of expats returning to Ireland on holiday. Gibbons says that The Gathering was very successful in attracting diaspora visitors. “Out of the seven and a half million people that come to Ireland every year, actually about half of them are in the VFR market.

“Now there’s an important issue here, because they don’t all come and stay with their mums and dads. They do stay in paid tourist accommodation, they do go out and visit attractions,” he said. “It probably plays a bigger role from an Australian perspective because the likelihood is when people come home from Britain for holidays they are more likely to stay with friends and relatives, whereas people coming over from Australia … may end up staying in accommodation or taking a bit of a holiday.”

The forthcoming Rugby World Cup and the International Rules test in November have given TI another opportunity to drive Australian traffic. Sponsoring the Irish team during the recent Cricket World Cup also worked very well for TI, Gibbons says, increasing their digital profile.

“I thought it worked really well for us, particularly when we won the first match against West Indies. Our presence on social media is very strong. For a small country, our footprint is impressive.

“We have the fourth largest following on Facebook with three million fans, third largest on Twitter and second largest on YouTube. So having the Ireland.com brand associated with the cricket team was very good for us,” he says.

Launching the new Australian strategy in Dublin, Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Paschal Donohoe TD said: “Australia will have an important role to play in helping to sustain our tourism sector, our economy and to both sustain and create jobs in communities right across the country.”


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