American travel bloggers Cameron Seagle and Natasha Alden have been visiting Galway this week on assignment with Lonely Planet for its Pathfinders programme, which is part of a new promotion with Tourism Ireland in the US.
The Pathfinders programme involves Lonely Planet inviting bloggers, photographers, videographers and digital influencers to visit a destination and produce videos, photos and articles for Lonely Planet and the bloggers’ own channels, cross-promoting each other’s work.
The Tourism Ireland partnership with Lonely Planet includes:
- a video filmed in Galway for The World Pursuit YouTube channel;
- three Facebook Live sessions on the Lonely Planet Facebook page (a cooking demo at Aniar Boutique Cookery School, Claddagh ring-making and the Oyster Festival);
- an article about Galway on The World Pursuit website;
- an album on The World Pursuit Facebook page;
- and highlights from each day of the visit on Seagle and Alden’s Instagram stories.
"An Increasingly Important Role"
“Blogs and social media are playing an increasingly important role in the planning process among US travellers, so Tourism Ireland is delighted to work with Lonely Planet to highlight Galway and its International Oyster Festival,” said Alison Metcalfe, Tourism Ireland’s head of North America. “Tourism Ireland undertakes a busy publicity programme in the US and elsewhere around the world each year to raise the profile of the island of Ireland. Visits by travel journalists and digital influencers like Cameron and Natasha are a key element of that programme.”
North America Promotional Activity
Tourism Ireland has an extensive programme of targeted promotional activity under way in North America this autumn to highlight vacations in Ireland in the shoulder and off-season months and to position us well for 2019.
Metcalfe continued, “Last year, we welcomed a record 1.83 million visitors from North America to the island of Ireland and the growth momentum continues in 2018, with the latest CSO figures indicating an increase of over 13% in visitors from the US and Canada for the January to August period. We are confident that our strategy for growth and extensive marketing programme, combined with more airline seats than ever before and the superb vacation experience on offer in Ireland, will deliver further record growth this year and into 2019.”
© 2018 Hospitality Ireland – your source for the latest industry news. Article by Dave Simpson. Click subscribe to sign up for the Hospitality Ireland print edition.
