While Dublin is basking in its status as a hot-spot for time-pressed visitors, the regions stuggle with the pain of rejection, writes Rosita Boland
By far the biggest growth in Irish tourism is the short-stay city break, according to a study published by the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation this week. It found that in the period 1999-2004, the number of visitor to Dublin was up 41 per cent. By contrast, other regions were significantly down on visitors: the Shannon region was down by 39 per cent and the west coast was down 22 per cent.
Does this mean Dublin is taking tourists from the rest of the country, or do the statistics reflect growth in a new kind of tourist - the urban tourist - who is only interested in a short-stay city break?
"These Dublin numbers are for a totally different market," says Frank Magee, chief executive of Dublin Tourism. "That business wouldn't go anywhere else in Ireland." Dublin is currently number three in Europe as a short-breaks city destination, behind London and Paris. British visitors form the biggest slice of the Dublin market.
Contrary to how it may appear to anyone who walks through Temple Bar at weekends, the infamous stag and hen parties compose only 0.5 per cent of the total number of visitors to Dublin. "They are not a significant number," Magee says. "They're more visible than other visitors as they tend to be confined to a certain small area of the city."
Dublin Tourism is affiliated with 100 other cities, and Magee points out that the general trend internationally is towards urban tourism, and not just in Ireland.
Charles Sinnott is a hotelier based in the west who owns two hotels - Brooks Hotel on Dublin's Drury Street and the Connemara Coast Hotel in Furbo, Connemara, Co Galway. His Dublin hotel has "high occupancy" and the Galway one "doesn't achieve the level of occupancy as its Dublin counterpart".
Owning hotels on both sides of the country gives him a clear picture of each side of the tourism story. He cites limited access by air to the west and poor local infrastructure there as the main reasons why the west is losing out to urban tourism. "We have a very high percentage of short-break visitors in Dublin, and they're coming from the UK, the US and Europe. What we're finding is that a lot of American tourists come to Dublin only for a few days as part of a longer Europe-based trip. They see Dublin as an 'Ireland experience' and feel that they can get a taste of Ireland by a short visit to its capital."
SINNOTT THINKS THE "massive growth" in tourist numbers to Dublin "may have disguised an underlying problem to attract longer-stay visitors." However, he also thinks there are a number of other reasons why Dublin has become so popular as a city destination. "Riverdance at the Point was seen by a huge audience worldwide. That put the name of Dublin on the map, just at the same time that access to the city was becoming easier by cheaper flights - such as Ryanair. Temple Bar has a name that was really only built up in the last decade, so it would be perceived as a new attraction, as opposed to such established cultural icons as the Book of Kells and the museums."
The most important reason, Sinnott feels, is that time is increasingly becoming a priority for people.
"People want to take shorter breaks at short notice. Dublin has an infrastructural advantage over the rest of the country. You can fly on from Dublin to another European capital for the same amount of time and money that it would cost you to go to Killarney by train," Sinnott points out.
American married couple Art and Kristin Ayers, from Michigan, are looking at postcards in the Dublin Tourism Centre on Suffolk Street. They've been hopping on and off one open-top tour buses all morning and are a good example of "short-break onwards" visitors. They flew in from London the previous night and they will fly out tonight to Paris, and will stay there for only one night also. That makes their visit to Ireland a shade over 24 hours. "We don't have much time, so we're trying to see a little in a lot of places," Art Ayers explains.
Mary Cosgrave, the manager of publicity and public relations for Fáilte Ireland, the national tourism development authority, believes that "Dublin isn't taking tourists from the rest of Ireland. Short city breaks are increasingly popular." Fáilte Ireland is currently running various publicity and media campaigns both at home and abroad to try to attract people to the regions.
The hard fact is that it's going to take more than pretty pictures of Connemara and Kerry to get tourists here. "In pricing, we're always trying to ensure Ireland maintains its competitive advantage," Cosgrave says. However, it's well documented that Ireland remains an expensive country to visit, with car-hire, hotels, alcohol and restaurant food all carrying higher prices in general than many of our European neighbours.
The words "rip-off Ireland" may be hated by the tourism industry, but the issue of high prices crops up again and again in conversations with tourists. And may prove to be one of the biggest obstacles to luring more visitors - including those from the domestic market - into the regions.
City sickness: 10 reasons to give Dublin a miss
Dublin Airport Enough said. Not to mentionthe horrible journey from the airport to the city, past the opaque mystery that is the Port Tunnel
Grafton Street The constant river of humanity
Dublin Bus The baffling logic of keeping the middle doors permanently shut so you have to fight your way to the front of a crowded bus to get off
Molly Malone statue Tourists mistakenly think is a magnificent example of our rich culture
Gridlock Everlasting and noisy - and the constant digging all over the place
Restaurants Overpriced and underwhelming
Dirty old town Filthy footpaths, permanently pock-marked with chewing gum
Property Multi-million euro exclusive Dublin apartment schemes/housing developments. It's depressing, not impressing
Shopping trolleys They all seem to end up dumped in the canals
Traffic lights They're all geared towards vehicles, not pedestrians. You run the risk of being flattened each time you cross in the alloted three nano-seconds
Dundrum Town Centre An unspeakably vulgar example of greedy developers giving us what they have persuaded themselves we cannot possibly live without
Rosita Boland (a Clare woman)