While foot-and-mouth took its toll, cold-eyed tour operators admit the alarm bells were already clanging Being cool is no longer enough to attacttourists. Can this week's announcement of a major review of tourism policyresuscitate this ailing industry, asks Kathy Sheridan
When Charlie McCreevy announced that the boom was over a few weeks ago, it surprised no one in the Irish tourist industry. For it, the party had folded long before, with the announcement of a foot-and-mouth case in the Cooley peninsula early last year. Then came September 11th.
The end was all the more shocking because the industry had just emerged triumphant, from its best year to date. The year 2000 was the pinnacle. In 10 years, visitor numbers had doubled to more than six million. Employment climbed by 84 per cent to 138,000, putting its share of the national workforce at 8 per cent, ahead of farming. Nearly €4.5 billion worth of investment had been pumped into it, "about two-thirds of it from the private sector".
From a fledgling cottage industry, it had fought a long, hard battle to assume a key role in the economy. It left the thatched cottage/donkey phase for the contemporary images of Brand Ireland, with its promise of a green, people-oriented, high quality European destination and the tag-line, "Live a Different Life".
Suddenly, Ireland was cool, the industry reaped the rewards and the only way was up.
Then, goes the popular version, along came a sheep and Osama bin Laden and suddenly the market fell by 5 per cent. It might not seem like disaster, but averages can hide individual pain. For example, although the British market showed no dip, American coach tours fell by a quarter and could show a further drop of up to 40 per cent island-wide, this year. The significance of this is that although the British market is the most important for numbers, the average British tourist spends just €356 compared with €806 for an American. Basically, because Americans stay longer.
Despite that, industry revenue appeared to hold its own in 2001, with CSO figures suggesting it rose by 7 per cent.
The Irish Tourist Industry Confederation (ITIC) hotly contests that, saying that it does not reflect business on the ground.
Others accept the figure, but suggest it was probably driven by costs rather than profit.
In any event, some cold-eyed operators admit the alarm bells were already clanging well before the hapless sheep of Cooley. ITIC's examination of the industry, in the form of the Tansey report, pointed to a "deep deterioration" in price competitiveness since 2000.
No surprise then that the industry has widely welcomed the Minister, John O'Donoghue's, speedy response to the changing fortunes of Irish tourism.
This week in the Dáil, he announced a major policy review to be led by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, which he intends to see completed by March 2003.
The Government also agreed the text of a Bill which establishes the National Tourism Development Authority (NTDA), merging the remaining functions of Bord Fáilte with CERT, the hospitality training authority.
Paul O'Neill, chief executive of Tourism Ireland Ltd, the new body hived off from Bord Fáilte and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board with the sole function of marketing the island of Ireland internationally, says the "big issue is that September 11th and foot-and-mouth may be masking some longer-term issues". It is no longer enough to be "cool" in an uncertain global economy. And any reinvention to be done is mostly tinkering round the edges. Competitiveness, i.e. value for money, is the issue.
The industry attributes runaway prices to national inflation - rising by 22 per cent since 1996, twice the EU average - and the fact that we can no longer hide behind compensating exchange rates. No one mentions undue profit-taking. Or complacency.
Privately, the four-star hotel chains and Dublin in particular, get it in the neck from insiders for charging anything they like and providing any old service they like, on the basis that if one punter walks away, another will be right along.
Hotel rooms can yield gross profits of up to 90 per cent, says an old hand, so it was a simple matter for operators to jack up the prices when they felt like it. Hotels are not the only culprits. Evidence of euro-profiteering is visible across the services sector, which also happens to be the one most relevant to tourists. "When you think that to bring a tourist back on repeat visits costs only half in marketing terms what it took to get him here the first time, it is an extraordinarily short-sighted policy", says one insider.
Marketing Ireland in the mid-1990s was very different, says another, because the challenge then was to bridge the gap between perceptions and reality, to convince people that Ireland was not a land of boarding school cuisine, boreens and shebeen accommodation. Marketeers were happy in the knowledge that the promise they were selling would be even better in reality. Now the danger is that it is going the other way; that the promise is not being delivered in reality.
"Our biggest challenge," says O'Neill, "is that if Ireland is considered to be more expensive, we have to demonstrate that it is worth it . . . But the quality of product and the quality of service could be fraying around the edges," he adds delicately.
No one likes to dwell too much on the disappearing Fáilte. Aside from profiteering, it is the other elephant in the drawingroom. Our scenery is no more spectacular than Scotland's (probably our closest rival, along with Northern Ireland, England, Wales and Brittany); our weather is worse, mostly; our green reputation has taken a battering in recent years. The interaction with the people, the informal conversations, the emotional connection, is all that remains to distinguish us.
Ireland is still sold abroad on the basis of the Three Ps - People, Place and Pace - signifying the warmth of the welcome, the beauty of the landscape and the easier pace of life.
The reality is Bord Fáilte and ITIC have had to run a joint programme to remind the industry about the importance of the fáilte. Rudi Giuliani's "Smile New York" campaign is mentioned by a few, "But Lord, perish the thought that we'd have to put smiley badges on taxi drivers", says one. Many see the problem as rooted mainly in Dublin, and particularly in the young. "I think you see it mostly in a generation that has lived in nothing but relative luxury and that breeds a certain social arrogance, an over-confidence, which doesn't do us any justice," says Brian McColgan, joint MD of Abbey Tours, one of the country's most successful incoming tour operators.
The hope is that the industry recognises the slump as a wake-up call. "There is a growing realisation that tourism is a competitive industry and those who offer the best service are going to out-perform those who don't," says McColgan. "With good management, friendliness and a welcome are free - but that culture of service has to come from the top."
There are many who believe that the industry is not getting the message.
Although it portrays itself as an industry whose problems are mainly external, McColgan points to areas such as marketing, client care, innovations and good ideas within particular contexts, where there is much work to be done. With 75 per cent of his market in Europe, McColgan is acutely conscious of the need to offer his client groups "a more rounded experience" of Ireland.
"If as a group, you visit the Ring of Kerry and it's raining, and then you do Connemara in a mist, you've missed two of the highlights. That's when you need to have someone who can transform what an individual can do into a group experience like say, learning to fish, or to pull a pint of Guinness or walking or cycling in a beautiful environment . . ." The long-discussed national conference centre, he adds, is now of vital importance.
With rocky times ahead, everyone is agreed that the days of frantic building and non-stop growth are over. It is time for new strategies, more streamlining of myriad industry representative bodies and more plain speaking.
The plain speaking might begin with the simple assumption that when a tourism body is asked for numbers, that means pure tourist numbers - not business people and not people here to visit friends and relatives. Meanwhile, here is something you can do at home. Apparently, a rule of thumb is to take the figure given, (say, last year's 5.9 million for the Republic), knock 59 per cent off it, to give you the true tourist numbers for last year at 2.4 million.
Which figure the industry bases its impressive calculations on, is not altogether clear. Hopefully, it will be one of the many issues that will be clarified come March.