Minister Paschal Donohoe  and Tourism Ireland have  launched a €12 million promotional campaign, to boost late-season travel to Ireland from around the world. The 

September to December period usually yields as much as 30% of Ireland’s annual overseas tourism business.

 

The campaign will highlight the many festivals and events taking place right around the island this autumn – from the Dublin Theatre Festival to the Bram Stoker Festival, Culture Night, the Ulster Bank Belfast International Arts Festival, Wexford Festival Opera, Savour Kilkenny Food Festival, The Outing, Cork Jazz Festival and the Galway International Oyster and Seafood Festival. Tourism Ireland will also continue to highlight Yeats2015 and ID2015 (the year of Irish design) – taking every opportunity to leverage the tourism benefits of these year-long celebrations.

 

Tourism Ireland CEO Niall Gibbons said: ’We have seen very strong growth of +12% in overseas visitors to Ireland for the first seven months of 2015. We are determined to keep that momentum going and ensure that growth continues. Our autumn campaign aims to take advantage of late booking trends in our target markets, as there is still plenty of business to play for. Many people are opting for shorter holiday breaks and autumn is a good opportunity with many world-class festivals and events happening around the island’.

 

The campaign – which is being rolled out in Great Britain, North America, Mainland Europe, Australia and emerging markets – will incorporate a major focus on city breaks, as well as on attracting visitors to more rural areas over the coming months. Tourism Ireland will maximise the introduction of a number of new year-round and winter air routes, to grow tourism in the shoulder and off-seasons. Highlights of the activity include co-operative promotions with Aer Lingus, Ryanair and Stena Line, transatlantic and long-haul airlines like United Airlines, Air Canada rouge and Emirates; extensive online advertising; as well as a busy programme of digital, PR and social media activity. 

 

Other highlights from the campaign:

 

Two major co-operative campaigns – with Aer Lingus and Ryanair – will run in our main markets across Mainland Europe, highlighting good value fares to Ireland for the autumn period and early 2016.

About 100 top business tourism buyers – from Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and India – will take part in a major Meet in Ireland workshop in Dublin and familiarisation visit to the Wild Atlantic Way, in October.

Tourism Ireland will bring 170 top overseas travel agents and tour operators to the island of Ireland this autumn, to meet with 420 tourism businesses here and negotiate inclusion in their 2016 brochures and programmes.

‘Jump into Ireland’ travel trade and media blitzes in Minneapolis, Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Francisco;

Tourism Ireland will ‘wrap’ Metro newspapers in New York, Boston and Philadelphia next week – with attractive, four-page wraps highlighting great reasons to travel here in the October to March period to about 600,000 commuters in the three cities;

Tourism Ireland has commissioned two popular travel vloggers (or video bloggers), brothers Marko and Alex Ayling who are known as the Vagabrothers, to produce a series of nine videos, or vlogs, which will highlight three key themes: the Wild Atlantic Way, gastromony in Cork city and county, as well as culture and design in Dublin (with a focus on ID2015, the Year of Irish Design);

‘Flavours of Ireland’ – targeting long-haul markets through UK inbound tour operators; and

World Travel Market, London – the largest B2B event in the global travel and tourism calendar, where Ireland’s Ancient East will be launched to the influential travel professionals in attendance.