Remote working to be followed by remote play

Experts expect virus fears will see less crowded locales rule tourism trends

IRELAND is set to market itself as an uncrowded, safe corner of Europe as the continent prepares to reopen for tourism.

And rural tourist hotspots are gearing up to attract not only domestic tourists but overseas visitors too this summer season as they ramp up advertising campaigns in contrast to the Government’s softly-softly approach.

It comes as the British travel writer Tom Robbins speculated this week that tourists would turn their backs on hotspots like Paris and Rome and opt for relatively remote places in Europe such as Ireland.

‘As anxieties about infection persist, the draw of the big crowded honeypots (St Peter’s Square or the alleyways of Dubrovnik) may begin to fade,’ Mr Robbins wrote. ‘Instead visitors might spread out into lesser visited parts – a long held strategy for dealing with overtourism.’ Currently, Tourism Ireland has suspended all its active marketing campaigns but an industry marketing source says that Ireland’s location on the edge of Europe with relatively low Covid19 infection rate will be useful assets when it resumes.

‘Safety is going to be to the fore in all travellers’ minds. If people are going to travel overseas, they’re not going to want to go to cities, they’re going to want to go to the great outdoors and that’s something we have in abundance in Ireland,’ he said. ‘Rural areas have long emphasised escapes from the crowd, the pandemic has made that message even stronger.’

Westport in Co. Mayo, one of Ireland’s most popular tourist towns, is already on message. It is making plans to bring more of its hospitality business onto its streets, as well as emphasising the abundance of the green space surrounding the town. Helen Gavin, head of Westport Chamber of Commerce, said its hotels are already taking bookings from overseas visitors for this summer.

‘We want to appeal to the domestic market but our overseas visitors are also very important to us,’ she said. ‘We see this as an opportunity to bring the people who might have just stayed in Dublin before, to come out into the country and see what we have to offer.

‘We are a very safe uncrowded location.’

On Thursday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said it could take months, not weeks, for Covid-19 restrictions to be lifted and travel around the EU to return to normal.

However, EU officials, scrambling to rescue Europe’s tourism industry, hinted in Brussels on Wednesday that things might move a lot faster than that.