Round towers without lifts, traffic lights that go ‘bip bip’ and sheep covered in graffiti – just some of the Irish quirks some visitors find irksome
THERE ARE not many jobs where customers expect you to know both the time of the next church service and directions to the nearest lap-dancing club, but that’s the lot of the staff who work in Fáilte Ireland tourist offices around the State. They have been asked to predict the weather, adjudicate arguments about historic events and to look under the bonnets of stalled camper vans.
Fielding odd queries is all in a day’s work, according to Medbh Killilea, a senior travel adviser for Fáilte Ireland West in Galway. “We are so used to it at this stage that we don’t bat an eyelid.”
You could blame the jet lag or the language barrier, but these can’t fully explain the daftness of some tourists’ questions. Killilea tells of how she once struggled to maintain her composure after overhearing a tourist asking why the traffic lights made a beeping noise. Her colleague explained that it was to help blind people. “The visitor was amazed by this and replied ‘Oh my gosh, back home the visually impaired aren’t allowed to drive’.”
Another visitor was being given directions when he interrupted the travel adviser to ask “is your left the same as ours?”. Tourist offices are supposed to be founts of all knowledge about their area, but sometimes their customers take that expectation to extremes.Take the US tourist who was curious about the exact dimensions of the breakfast he would be eating the following morning. “The tourist wanted to know how big the sausages would be in the hotel we had booked them into,” recalls Aoife McHugh of Sligo Tourist Information Office.
“A lot of tourists ask what size the bed will be in the B&B or how high it will be,” McHugh says. “It’s usually Americans who ask about the specific size of beds.” It is also usually Americans who ask about leprechauns, and, yes, some of them really do believe in their existence. She has been asked, in all seriousness, when the leprechauns will be showing up. But perhaps it’s our fault. McHugh recalls one tour group driver who stopped the bus suddenly and told the passengers a leprechaun had just crossed the road. Every man, woman and child jumped out of the bus to see the mythical creature.
And there are a few tourists who seem to have checked their brains in with their luggage at the airport. Such as the one who asked if the water in Sligo’s Garavogue river flowed the same way every day. (No, it changes direction every Thursday.) Or the tourist who asked what shape the stars were in Glencolumbkille. And there was the visitor who called in to the Galway office after a day tour of Connemara to ask who allowed the sheep to be covered in graffiti.
Kevin Dowling, a senior travel adviser in Kilkenny, recalls a tourist asking why a ninth-century round tower didn’t have a lift. Another asked why Kilkenny Castle was built beside the river and on hearing that it was for transport reasons, replied: “Wouldn’t it make more sense to build it beside the airport, so?”
British tourism officials have frequently been asked why people built so many ruined castles and abbeys in England, and why Windsor Castle was built so close to Heathrow airport. An Australian tourist adviser was once asked if you could wear high heels “down under”.
English Heritage has compiled its own list of strange questions asked by tourists. One young visitor to Osborne House – where Queen Victoria died in 1901 – asked “Is this where Sharon and Ozzy actually live?”.
The Daily Telegraphalso put together an international list of the daftest queries fielded by tourism officials, including: Are there any lakes in the Lake District? Do you know of any undiscovered ruins? Who performs at the circus in Piccadilly?
The Travel Industry Association of America has also collected a few gems. Does the sun set every night? Are the Amish in season? Is that the same moon we have in Vermont? And: Why is the “Closed for Cleaning” sign on the rest room?
Fáilte Ireland employs almost 200 permanent and seasonal staff to answer queries in 53 tourist offices, according to a spokesman. He says many Irish people also seek out local offices for information and advice. “We would encourage any Irish people travelling around this summer to check out their local tourist offices. They could be very surprised at how much information they find.”
