Skip to main content

Failte Ireland lies to International Media!?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Failte Ireland lies to International Media!?

I love Dublin! I am living here for ages and for more than 11 years I wrote a online publication about cultural events in Dublin, but during that time I also have seen how the official groups responsible for tourism (especially in Dublin!) do less and less and expect more and more money to be dropped by tourists.

New Year’s Eve is not the most exciting day of the year in Dublin and if anyone asked me, I would strongly recommend that potential visitors stay far away between 24 December and 02/03 January. It is just sooo disappointing if you go to a city for these celebrated days and there is NOTHING happening.

In previous years some attempts were made to make Dublin a little more interesting at least over New Year with the New Year’s Festival Dublin. It consisted of some events on New Year’s eve (many years ago we even had fireworks!) and then more events and activities on New Year’s Day. But in 2018 all this changed again and it is the poorest and most disappointing events programme for the New Year’s Festival in at least 5, maybe 10 years!

There are just two light shows at Customs House. They are free, but needed tickets (which are all gone) and then there is a gig (not free!!) in the 3Arena. Apart from that there is not a single official event and NO events on New Year’s Day. Private Fireworks are forbidden in Ireland, nobody pays fro public Fireworks, so New Year’s Eve is a Non-Event!

That’s the facts!! But Failte Ireland is of the opinion that the facts shouldn’t get in the way of their “Fake news” marketing!

900 media representatives from 20 countries were invited to come to Ireland just before New Year’s and Failte Ireland is trying to convince them of something that is clearly untrue.

A RTE News article here says:

“The New Year’s Festival in Dublin is set to showcase tourism in the capital, and encourage more people to visit the capital and Ireland in 2019, according to tourism groups.”

“Liam Campbell from Fáilte Ireland’s International Publicity team said this year’s New Year’s Festival promises to be the most impressive end of year celebration Dublin has ever seen.”

What an amount of codswallop!

Do I think people should come to Dublin? Absolutely YES! It is a great place with lots of free and non free events during the year. This is mostly not thanks to Failte Ireland or Dublin City, but luckily we have lots of great people and businesses in Ireland that do a great job. But PLEASE tell people that they should avoid the Christmas and New Year’s period if they don’t want to be disappointed.

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Events, Media, Odd, Overexaggerations, Tourism, , , ,

Together we are strong? Not the touristic sites in Dublin!!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Together we are strong? Not the touristic sites in Dublin!!

At some point in life we learned that if we form strong alliances and work in a team, we are stronger than if we fight against each other. And we also should have learned by now that hostility against people that grew up or live somewhere else than we do, is not cool at all.

So, who was the smart cookie, that came up with this amazingly clever idea to create “Dublin Northside Attractions” as a separate tourist entity with their own website at www.dublindna.ie? As tiny as Dublin is and as close as Northside and Southside are, it is totally nonsensical, bordering on idiotic, to artificially create further a divide than we need to. I am not convinced that Failte Ireland or Dublin Tourism had that idea, but they are certainly endorsing it according to the website.

So, the Northside Attractions seem to think they are something better OR they think they are inferior. (These are typically the drivers for the creation of gangs! And there is no organisation or website for “Dublin Southside Attractions” at the moment.) We don’t know why, though.

But if you start your own gang, there is one important element to consider: You have to be ruthless and rigorous in the application of the rules, otherwise your inverse-discrimination doesn’t work.

And that is where the next idiocy comes in: One outsider attraction that was accepted in the “Dublin Northside Attractions” gang is the Guinness Storehouse in the Liberties! Northside? Not at all!

So why did they break their own rules and accept a Southside attraction in their midst? Well, because it is the most popular attraction in Dublin and gangs always want the popular kid in their own gang, not in the enemy gang.

Narrow-minded nonsense!

 

Dublin, Events, Tourism, , , ,

Festival Sponsorship not the way it should be?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Festival Sponsorship not the way it should be?

Junior Minister Michael Ring (Tourism & Sport) has announced which festivals will get funding from Failte Ireland this year and there are some oddities among them. In total 23 national festivals and events are getting 1.8mio in 2016, but some should get (a lot) less and others should get more. Have a look at the list here, before you continue reading so that you can form your own opinion first.

One single festival takes the majority of money and really just leaves crumbs for the rest: The St. Patrick’s Festival sucks up a whole 1 mio and I really don’t think it is worth that amount. While the parade has significantly improved from the parades 10 or 20 years ago, it has come to a standstill for many years now. There is no more improvement and year after year, the same formula with just slight alterations will be applied. The festival route is still too short for the amount of people that would like to see something and are left bitterly disappointed and the festival would definitely benefit from an overhaul. Sure, there are still up to approximately 300,000 people on the streets for it (don’t believe the 500k lie!!) but in terms of cultural value, the St. Patrick’s Day Festival is definitely not the top event!

And a little further down the list, there are these four:
Ireland BikeFest EUR 30,000
Bloomsday EUR 25,000
City Spectacular EUR 25,000
Rock n Roll, Dublin Half Marathon EUR 20,000

The Bikefest hasn’t really impressed in recent years and 30k seems relatively high for that, where the Bloomsday uses up 25k is difficult to see and that the 100% commercial Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon gets ANY funding is extremely surprising. But the City Spectacular on the other hand, which is one of the, if not THE best event in Dublin only gets 25k!? That’s odd!! They deserve a LOT more!

Dublin, Events, Politics, Society, , , , ,
 
Malcare WordPress Security