Eoghan Sadlier – Tourism manager, Kildare Village
I’VE BEEN here since mid-November last. Kildare Village outlet centre is part of an international company called Chic Outlet Shopping.
We have eight outlet malls around Europe, including ones at Bicester near Oxford in the UK, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and Milan.
All of them are situated in easily accessible locations around an hour from a major city. While a huge part of our success comes from domestic visitors, my job is to encourage international tourists visiting Ireland to come to Kildare Village as part of their stay.
I’ve always worked in tourism. Prior to this I worked in marketing for Mount Juliet, the hotel in Kilkenny. I’ve also worked for Sunway, the travel company, and I spent 15 years working for Aer Lingus, based in Paris.
I live in Blackrock and it takes only 45 minutes to get to Kildare for 8.30am each morning because I’m going against the traffic.
I’ll go round the village twice a week to see what’s going on and meet with staff but most of my time is spent out meeting tour operators and hoteliers. We are always looking for potential partners, such as Aer Lingus and Etihad, with which to run joint promotions.
Every day is different, though. This morning I was at a Fáilte Ireland tourism briefing to hear what its marketing plans are this year. It is focusing on Germany, France, the US and UK so it makes sense for us to mirror that with our own marketing activities.
At the moment I’m also concentrating on attracting conference tourism, working with the new Convention Centre Dublin to target what we call the MICE market – meetings, incentives, conferences and events.
Such visitors arrive in Ireland for just two or three days and normally have half a day to explore and my job is to show tour operators how worth their while it is to bring them here. We’re very close to the National Stud and Japanese Gardens, so it makes for a very nice tourism package.
I’ll have lunch at my desk unless I’m meeting a client, in which case I’ll bring them to one of the two restaurants on-site.
If people haven’t been here before they are always impressed by it because it’s immaculate and laid back with a very relaxing, outdoor environment. We have 60 brands here in all. My own favourites are Hugo Boss and Aquascutum.
At least some part of my week is spent meeting with the marketing department, the PR people and the retail team to talk through various marketing initiatives.
I’ll finish up at around 6.30pm and be home by 7.30pm, and will try to get to the gym or for a walk each day.
I think I have the best of both worlds these days because I’m still in tourism but I’m also in a new sector, retail, so I’m learning fast.
In conversation with
SANDRA O'CONNELL