(TAN): Ireland has clinched the title of one of the ‘top ten most promising overseas destinations’ for Chinese travellers at the Golden Footprint Cultural Tourism Summit held in China earlier this month.
Tourism Ireland accepted the award at the event organised by Weibo and attended by travel journalists and professionals, and social influencers in Sichuan province’s Panzhihua. Weibo is a Chinese microblogging website.
The island in the North Atlantic won the award for Tourism Ireland’s efforts on Weibo to increase its followers and promote Ireland among Chinese tourists in 2019. Tourism Ireland’s efforts have raised its followers by 54% since the beginning of 2019 to 330,000 on Weibo.
Aisling McDermott, Tourism Ireland’s Manager Asia and Middle East, said social media, especially Weibo in China, was an “integral element of Tourism Ireland’s overall promotional programme”. While most Chinese tourists search for information online before deciding on their holiday destination, half of tourism-related planning is done on mobile devices, which makes it important for Tourism Ireland to reach people through digital and social media, it said.
“We are constantly looking at innovative and engaging ways of reaching Chinese travellers – using great photos, videos and a range of engaging content to raise awareness of the island of Ireland among our followers and to ensure Ireland stands out from other destinations,” she added.
While around 100,000 Chinese tourists visited Ireland in 2018, Tourism Ireland aimed to double Chinese visitor numbers to 200,000 by 2025. To reach this goal, the marketing body will double its marketing investment in China to EUR 1 million (USD 1.11 million approximately), and double its marketing team to 12 this year.
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Tourism accounts for 4% of Ireland’s Gross National Income while employing around 325,000 people. Ireland welcomed nearly 11.2 million overseas visitors in 2018. Tourism Ireland’s three-year marketing strategy for 2020-22 aims to increase visitor numbers to 12 million by 2022. Overseas revenue for 2018 stood at nearly EURO 5.86 billion (USD 6.48 billion approximately) which the marketing body aims to raise to EUR 6.54 billion (USD 7.25 billion approximately) by 2022.
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