fáilte interview
Continuing to Deliver the Experience Orla Carroll is Director of Strategic Development
at Fáilte Ireland. It’s a role that has been an important component of the evolution of how the national tourism development authority goes about its business.
One of the central components of her position is that of combining the work of all the attractions, activities and festivals nationwide. This means looking after those that are in situ as well as trying to come up with new initiatives and innovative ideas to attract more domestic and overseas visitors. This isn’t apparently just another case of moving around the deck chairs on the Good Ship Irish Tourism. This is all about making the national tourism service a more customer-focused and experience-focused one. It’s about making it all work better and more efficiently. By concentrating the area of events and festivals in one Department, the aim is to improve this important offer for the visitor and to tap into new ideas. Orla explains: “We’ve set up a whole product development team which is looking at the area of activities, attractions and festivals. Within that, we have €125 million capital funding in our activities and attractions side of things and with that and we have an excellent working relationship and positive strategic partnerships with the OPW, Coillte, the National Parks & Wildlife Service (NPWS) and Waterways Ireland.
Powerscourt Estate 16
H&RT JUNE/JULY 2018
“We have approximately 25 projects ongoing with these strategic partnerships while simultaneously we are working on 24 projects that have come through Fáilte Ireland’s large capital grant scheme, with a good national spread. These are projects, which will be funded through our large grant scheme to fund major projects with between €200,000 to €5million in support. We also have a Small Grants Scheme to assist projects in the Ancient East and on the Wild Atlantic Way and will be launching one for Dublin shortly.” A new small grant scheme for the Skellig Coast and Connemara has recently been launched – a place fast becoming something of a global sensation due to its use in two of the recent Star Wars films. . “Some of our capital projects are at different stages, be it at feasibility study stage or at various stages of development… at the larger end of things, there’s the VAULTS.LIVE® in Dublin. The project will transform a former school building as a tourism attraction to be known as ‘The Vaults’. The actor-led experience walks the visitor through 800 years of Ireland’s history with a script composed by Oscar nominated director/writer Peter Sheridan and is due to open for the 2018 season. What drives Fáilte Ireland’s interest? Is it a result of examining best practice elsewhere or responding to marketing feedback from visitors? “It’s a combination of both, I would say. Last year, for example, we did some research where we looked at 99 different concepts for festivals. This is a methodology we call the ‘Innovator’ and in it, we tested 99 different ideas. The research measures ‘motivation and consideration’, and what would motivate people to travel and the considerations they may have in terms of spend It’s a tried and tested methodology used by many in the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) area but which was a very customer-focussed way of planning for the future in a national tourism context. “When we were doing this, we didn’t look at any individual places,” Orla points out. “We weren’t analysing Powerscourt or Dublin Castle or any specific places. We were looking at more general concepts of tourism products, such as what an Irish country house and garden means to people. We were looking at the idea rather than individual sites. It’s to help us identify what are the types of experiences that people are most interested in amongst the different markets and so help us choose potential platforms to focus development on, going forward.” Two of the big ideas or grand motivators that were thrown up in this exercise as key elements of Ireland’s tourism offer were (a) access to our landscape and (b) our heritage. “Our landscape and access to it was an important one, be it on water or on land. From that, for example, you have the idea for the Wild Atlantic Way walking coastal path, which we are currently undertaking a pilot study for to identify needs and its feasibility.