Epic Museum numbers jump ahead of major ad campaign
EPIC, the Irish Emigration museum based in Dublin’s docklands, has seen a big jump in visitor numbers, new figures reveal.
The museum, which occupies a large portion of the vaults underneath former Coca-Cola boss Neville Isdell’s CHQ building, expects to pass a run rate of 120,000 visitors by the autumn, up from an annual run rate of 50,000 in 2016.
“It is really taking off,” said Epic’s sales and marketing director, Aileesh Carew. “We are into our first full summer season and the numbers are looking very positive. Tourism in the city is doing well and we are starting to get our share of the pie.”
Epic is the world’s first fully-digitised museum. Over €4m was invested in technology to tell the story of 900 years of Ireland’s emigration and global influence. The museum aims to cater for 750,000 visitors annually by 2020, which would make it Dublin’s third-most visited tourist attraction after the Guinness Storehouse and the Book of Kells at Trinity College. The museum is to invest €150,000 over the summer in a major advertising campaign across the city’s transport network that will kick off next week, as well as an initiative to allow taxi drivers in for free.
The growing numbers visiting the museum has coincided with increased footfall at CHQ itself with many units let out since Isdell bought the building in 2013 for over €10m. Urban Brewery, the smallest microbrewery in Europe, will open at the building later in the summer and it is expected that a large family restaurant will take one of the last remaining large units.