Is cultural tourism for you?

Tourism is a very important contributor to the Irish economy and an important part of the cultural audience infrastructure. For many arts organisations cultural tourism has the potential to be a growth area, and many links have formed between arts organisations and businesses and agencies in local areas.

We at Arts Audiences carried out an action research project with three representative arts organisations in 2011, and from that produced a ‘How to’ guide together with case studies. The guide says that the starting point for any strategy development has to be looking at the available information on audiences (and we have drawn together the main sources of information on our website). Tourism bodies carry out research in this area constantly. Failte Ireland, the Irish national tourism body, has developed a body of informed research which is disseminated through the arts sector. Research shows that cultural tourists tend to be more affluent, stay longer in Ireland, are interested in learning while on holiday, and tend to be from mainland Europe and the UK.

About half the decisions on what to attend are made on the day by visitors to Ireland, so expensive international advertising can be unnecessary

Understanding the trends and motivators of visitors is vital for any strategy. A majority of visitors to Ireland cite culture as a main attractor for their visit (with landscape coming top of a list of possible attractors). Heritage also features strongly while contemporary culture (including performing and visual arts) features less highly. While Ireland has a strong, year-round tourism business, 50% of our overseas visitors arrive each year in the period from June to September. Research carried out by Theatre Forum in 2011 showed that overseas visitors were an important part of the audience for the arts infrastructure, and for arts festivals particularly, where 34% of web traffic originated overseas.

Arts organisations also need to take a look at their offering. The first question to ask is ‘Is it worth it?’ and then ‘Are we on at the right time in the right place?’ If your venue or event is located in an area with big tourist numbers, marketing to visitors has a greater chance of success. Arts organisations need to work with their local tourism marketing bodies to look at the profiles of visitors to the area, and whether there are similarities between those profiles and current domestic audiences to see if there are similarities and potential for growth.

Organisations need to take a good, long look at their offering and their audience, and use evidence to make a judgement. We encourage them, as with all audience development work, to set objectives and targets, monitor them, and then be realistic about what can be achieved. Building a tourism audience is a medium and long-term strategy and it is important to recognise the challenges.

If a decision is taken to proceed with targeting cultural visitors, it is important to carry out a step-by-step marketing strategy and to think about concentrating resources online. The internet is used for travel research and booking, more than for any other function and a good digital strategy is essential for any tourism marketing. Media, such as local papers and radio, used to promote a programme to domestic audiences, are unlikely to reach visitors. About half the decisions on what to attend are made on the day by visitors to Ireland, so expensive international advertising can be unnecessary. Working with local businesses and tourism bodies can pay dividends.

Our advice is to do the research to see if cultural tourism is for you, and if it is, to work closely with the relevant tourism bodies and local businesses. Then go out early into the market, have a strong online presence and take the long view. A cultural visitor audience builds over time and needs investment and targets over time too.

Una Carmody is Director of Arts Audiences.
www.artsaudiences.ie

Arts Audiences is an initiative of the Arts Council in Ireland.