Telling Sheep's Head story to overseas reps

A WEST Cork co-operative was one of 50 tourism enterprises nationwide to win a place at an innovative workshop attended by representatives from Tourism Ireland’s overseas offices.

‘There were 37 of those offices represented, including representatives from China and the USA, which has new flights to Cork, as well as popular EU markets such as Germany and France,’ Siobhán Burke, who is the marketing co-ordinator with the Sheep’s Head and Bantry Tourism Co-operative, told The Southern Star.

‘Each of the 50 enterprises were given successive ten-minute slots – similar to speed dating – to promote our regions, and we did our best to promote everything positive about the Sheep’s Head peninsula including our world’ famous walking route.’

Between the hours of 2.30 and 6pm, Siobhán managed to have 18 separate meetings to promote the area to overseas tourism representatives and to supply them with promotional material about the Sheep’s Head.

The workshop and marketing event – which was entitled ‘Have you a story to tell?’ – explored how tourism businesses around the country could generate more international publicity and social media exposure for themselves, and for Ireland, and ultimately increase overseas tourism business in 2016.

‘The idea,’ said Siobhán, ‘was to tell a story that would capture the imagination of people interested in visiting Ireland and following the Wild Atlantic Way, and the response we got at the marketing event in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin on Monday, October 19th was tremendous.’Siobhán said: “Tourism Ireland recognises that publicity is an extremely powerful and effective way of promoting Ireland and reaching potential holidaymakers around the world, and we here in the Sheep’s Head are doing our part to generate as much positive coverage for West Cork as possible.’