Tourism Ireland announces €1 million ad campaign for 2015

Tourism Ireland’s 2015 marketing campaign will include prominent newspaper and television advertisments in the UK, the US and continental Europe.

The organisation will wrap the Daily Telegraph in Britain this week (a wrap is an ad that essentially covers a newspaper's front and back pages). The wrap will feature images of the Cliffs of Moher, Eyries village on the Beara Peninsula in Co Cork, Powerscourt Gardens and Dublin.

Tourism Ireland’s €1 million marketing campaign for 2015 was launched this week, targeting audiences in Britain, the US and Continental Europe. It coincided with the Christmas holiday period and was aimed at people planning holidays in 2015.

Ads promoting Ireland as a tourist destination also began airing on Friday on American television networks ABC, NBC and CBS across seven cities – Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco – during primetime slots. The ads will also air on the PBS network in January and February during season five of Downton Abbey.

Other components of the ad campaign include a collaboration with the Mail Online website to promote Dublin as a tourist destination by highlighting favourite haunts of celebrities including Rihanna, Beyoncé and Jay-Z when they are in town. Ads promoting Dublin also appeared this month in cinemas in France and Germany, reaching up to four million French and 750,000 German viewers.

In 2014, the State received 7.3 million overseas tourists, up 8.8 per cent from 2013’s figure and contributing more than €3.6 billion in revenue.

“We are determined to ensure that the tourism growth we have seen continues,” said Niall Gibbons, chief executive of Tourism Ireland. “Our aim is to welcome a record 7.74 million visitors to Ireland in 2015.”