Irish look to Indian market
Coupled with easy visa facilitation and improved connectivity to Ireland, the country is educating the travel trade about its new tourism offerings.
Ireland witnessed a growth of 20 per cent in the number of visas issued to Indians travellers, informs Niall Gibbons, CEO, Tourism Ireland. Ireland recently conducted its annual sales mission in Mumbai and New Delhi where Gibbons informed that the destination witnessed 27,500 Indian arrivals in 2015, corresponding to a 14 per cent increase over 2014.
Tourist arrivals from January to August, 2016, was up by 12.3 per cent with 6.55 million people visiting the destination during this period. “With Northern Ireland being a part of Ireland, we expect to have 10 million visitors by the end of 2016 corresponding to a double digit growth. Our traditional source markets are Great Britain, North America, Germany and France, comprising 70 per cent of the tourism business,” Gibbons adds.
The BIVS scheme has also facilitated many Indian visits to Ireland points out Gibbons. Talking about the effects of Brexit, he explains that Ireland shares a common travel area with the UK and a hard border will affect consumer confidence to travel to the region altogether. “We are working on a market diversification strategy and looking beyond our traditional source markets. While the UK contributes almost 40 per cent of our visitor numbers and 24 per cent of the spend, reports say that the outbound market from the UK has declined by 2.5 per cent. With the increasing outbound from India, Ireland will be well-positioned to capture business from this market. We are targeting the Asian market including China and Japan, New Zealand and Australia.” He further added that Ireland, Scandinavia, Portugal and Spain have benefited as safe travel destinations post the unfortunate attacks in other European countries. Ireland is promoting the destination through screen tourism. The locations where Star Wars and Game
of Thrones series were shot have been made into tourism products. Along with these, The Wild Atlantic Way, Causeway Coastal Route and Ireland’s Ancient East, are popular products amongst Indians. Gibbons says, “While we do not offer any tax incentives for film shooting in Ireland, we do assist film-makers in location recce, hotel deals, visa facilitation and ground services.”
According to Gibbons, the sales mission is a key element of their promotional programme in India. “We have interacted with over 150 operators companies in New Delhi alone. We are also investing in the specialist programme for the travel agents and tour operators,” says Gibbons.