Tourism bigwigs want to entice more big-spending execs from North America
There are plans to grow the value of corporate travel to Ireland to €1.2 billion by 2028.
TOURISM OFFICIALS ARE looking for help in order to attract more high-flying business travellers from North America.
Corporate travel is a lucrative market and research from Fáilte Ireland suggests the average business traveller spends €1,600 on these shores – roughly three times more than those who visit for pleasure.
The industry was worth about €715 million to Ireland in 2016, the most recent year for which estimates are available.
More than half of that figure is attributed to what the industry calls ‘promotable’ business trips – execs travelling for large events and company-incentive trips rather than face-to-face meetings.
The market segment is often referred to as ‘MICE’, which stands for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions.
With plans to grow the value of the sector to €1.2 billion within the next decade, Fáilte Ireland is looking for an outside company to help it generate leads in the US and Canada to bring more MICE dollars here.
According to a tender document published by the national tourism development agency, North American business travel to Ireland has “rebounded significantly” in recent years, growing from a low of 17,000 visitors in 2010 – the year the Convention Centre Dublin opened – to 27,000 in 2016.
Fáilte Ireland attributed that growth to a number of factors, namely the opening of the capital’s conference centre, a favourable dollar-euro exchange rate and the perception of Ireland as a safe destination.
However, the agency warns that “what got us here today will not necessarily get us to where we want to be in 10 years’ time”.
The Convention Centre Dublin
Ireland has traditionally been a strong destination for business travel from North America largely because of buyers’ “sentimental, ancestral link with the country”.
The country has, however, in more recent times had to compete on other merits, playing up its image as a “well-connected, progressive European business hub”, according to Fáilte Ireland.
Extra help
The state-backed agency already has a dedicated research unit under the ‘Meet in Ireland’ moniker, which is responsible for identifying organisations, meeting planners and associations that might host their corporate conferences here.
However, it’s looking for lead generation and sales experts to give the Meet in Ireland team a leg up in bringing fresh business from the US and Canada.
The successful bidder will be required to generate 30 new leads ever year and organise 20 so-called familiarisation – or ‘fam’ – trips between now and 2020 to allow event buyers to sample the country’s business travel products.
As previously explained by Fora, the itinerary for fam trips is mostly made up of exclusive activities like private Guinness Storehouse tours with the head brewer.
Of the extra €500 million worth of corporate travel targeted by Fáilte Ireland, a sizable chunk – about 15% – is earmarked specifically for events that take place outside the capital.
In order to achieve this, a number of issues will need to be addressed, namely the lack of a major events centre in Ireland’s second-largest city, Cork. A long overdue 6,000 capacity venue is due to come on stream in the coming years.
Meanwhile in Dublin, there is an ongoing issue with finding venues of scale for the likes of black-tie events.
In an interview with Fora last year, Fáilte Ireland’s business development head, Jenny Finegan, said a shortage of gala dinner venues was “an issues that has been around for a while” and makes it difficult to compete with rival cities like Prague.
