Mr. Aidan Pender:

We have done significant analysis. Last year, in particular, a considerable amount of detailed work was done on understanding consumer wants and needs in the United Kingdom. This work is being extended into Germany and France and, to some extent, the United States. What has been apparent in the past 12 months to two years is that we need to obtain better and deeper insights into consumer behaviour in our source markets than have been available in previous years. We are actively pursuing this and have obtained a better sense of what consumers are looking for, which enables us to segment them into different groups.

There has been a great deal of reflection on whether the Irish tourism product is getting tired, as Deputy Dooley noted, in terms of lakes, mountains and natural heritage. The other way to view this issue is to decide we are where we are, as it were, and these are our lakes, mountains, coastline, culture, language and folklore. These elements make up our heritage. Consumers are not tiring of this and there is nothing inherently jaded about the set of Irish tourism assets. We need to increasingly switch on to the fact that as lifestyles and consumer behaviours and interests change, we need to change the way in which visitors engage with these assets. Although there is not a fundamental problem or flaw with the tourism asset base, the nature of engagement is shifting enormously. The trick is to be very clever about how we allow or facilitate visitors to engage with our tourism assets.

To give a simple example, if one imagines how the Ring of Kerry, a globally known tourism product, was encountered by visitors in the 1960s and 1970s, people basically travelled around on a bus and looked out of the window. Visitors, irrespective of their age, are more active, energetic and better informed and want to engage with Ireland rather than observing it from a bus. There are issues about allowing tourists to slow down, take their time, learn a little and immerse themselves in our tourism assets. The asset base is in good shape. The challenge is to work to facilitate visitors to engage with it.