Seamus Heaney and Literary Tourism November 2015
BTS team Stewart Walker Ivan Broussine
Today Literary Tourism – examples and opportunities Why are we meeting you today? • To brief you on the Seamus Heaney developments • To see what opportunities there are for your business • Over to you = have your say
Who are the likely Seamus Heaney customers?
NI Market Segments
Sightseers and Culture Seekers Someone for whom exploring a country’s sights and finding out about its culture is the key motivator for going on holiday .” Visitors who engage with Ireland’s culture and heritage tend to: Stay longer Spend more Be affluent, well-travelled, highly educated and socially concerned Be middle-aged couples, either with older or no children Be interested in learning while on holiday Look for themed and authentic experiences Mainland Europe accounts for 43% of tourists visiting cultural and historical attractions Source: Fáilte Ireland
Sightseers and Culture Seekers 6.5 million in GB They like - exploration, engagement and authentic new experiences Who do Tourism Ireland target? Short City Breaks: 25-45, ABC1, (secondary focus on C2s), travel in couples or groups Longer Rural breaks: 35+ ABC1, secondary focus on C2s. In general the island appeals to a younger than average S&CS and TI target S&CSs nationwide, with a special focus on Scotland (NI Potential) What matters on holiday? Beautiful scenery and having lots to see and do value for money and safety and security are important to older S&Cs This group like to visit natural attractions and to experience local food, drink and cuisine. Exploring small towns and villages and visiting historic houses castles and gardens is also important. Getting under the skin of a destination is really important to this group Source: www.failteireland.ie/FailteIreland/media/WebsiteStructure/Documents/2_Develop_Your_Business/3_Marketing_Toolkit/5_Cultur al_Tourism/Sightseers-Culture-Seekers-UK.pdf
Literary Tourism – What is it? Destinations where there is a literary reference Motivations to visit: Intense study (“motivated”) Intrigued and interested (“motivated”) Day out or break with positive learning benefits (e.g. teach or pass on knowledge to children) (“motivated”) Visit something new (prompted by e.g. press) (“Inspired”) Desire to be entertained (“Inspired”/ “Incidental”) Drop in for cup of coffee/ wet weather retreat (“Incidental”) Strength of authenticity as a stimulus or reason for visit will vary amongst different types of visitors
Literary Tourism “If one of life's greatest pleasures is travel, and the other is books, then a site that promises to marry the two sounds just ideal and very necessary indeed” Alain de Botton
Literary destinations Notre Dame, 13.5m visits (how many inspired by Victor Hugo’s Hunchback?) Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust had 818,000 visits in 2014 (6 venues) Rosslyn Chapel (links to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code) 130,000 visits p.a.
Literary destinations Parsonage Museum Haworth, home of the Brontës, 73,000 visits in 2012 Yeats Memorial Building, Sligo, 4,000 visits The Patrick Kavanagh Centre, Inniskeen, Co. Monaghan, 2,700 visits
Robert Burns Burns House Museum, Mauchline - 5,614 visits Robert Burns House, Dumfries - 15,153 Robert Burns Centre, Dumfries - 37,929 Burns National Heritage Park, Ayr - 282,628
Literary Tourism - 4 Book-Inspired Experiences Dickens World Location: England Cost: £12 adults, £7 kids, £24.95 Hunger Games Adventure Weekend Location: Brevard and Transylvania County, North Carolina Cost: $389 Fifty Shades Of Grey Hotel Packages Location: Various, including San Francisco, California; Monterey, California; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington Cost: $369-$2,750 Hobbit-Themed Flight and Hotel Location: New Zealand Cost: Varies
Literary Trails 1. 45th Patrick Kavanagh Weekend & Irish Border Literary trail Poetry Awards 2. Inniskeen Road Evening 3. The Bard of Armagh Festival of Humorous Verse 4. The John Hewitt International Summer School 5. Bailieborough Poetry Festival 6. ‘At the Edge’ Literary Evenings 7. William Carlton Society International Summer School 8. Wild Words Children’s Book Festival 9. Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival 10. The Benedict Kiely Weekend 11. The 35th Annual MacGill Summer School & Arts Week 12. The Allingham Festival 13. Yeats International Summer School 14. Yeats Day
Literary trails Literary Trails Yorkshire Reliving Wuthering Heights On the trail of Agatha Christie The legacy of Count Dracula The Tolkien Triangle
Literary trails 1. Literary Pub Crawl, Dublin, Ireland - James Joyce, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett and WB Yeats, Oscar Wilde 2. Millennium Tour, Stockholm, Sweden- Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 3. Literary Landmarks, Boston, USA - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Henry James and Nathaniel Hawthorne 4. James Bond’s Mayfair, London, England – “Shaken , not stirred” 5. Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl, New York City, USA - Thomas Paine (author of Common Sense ), John Reed ( Ten Days that Shook the World ), Henry James ( Washington Square ) and Edith Wharton ( Age of Innocence ) 6. Writers in Paris, France - James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo 7. Literary Shanghai, China - associated with great local writers, including Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature; the walk also visits where the romantic poet Xu Zhimo once lived and hosted guests such as Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore and Irish writer George Bernard Shaw 8. Jane Austen in Bath, England - the setting for her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion 9. Melbourne Literary Tour, Australia - Unesco City of Literature in 2008 10. Wild Walk Along the Enchanted Way, Romania - William Blacker wrote Along the Enchanted Way after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989
Literary trails The Edinburgh Book Lovers – “ To discover literary Edinburgh, you have to walk it, defying Robert Louis Stevenson's "bleak winds" and exploring Dorothy Wordsworth's "passes of dark stone", simply because there is no other way of penetrating the ancient wynds, closes and creeper-ridden burial grounds of this city, whose literary past is written on it's dark and hoary face”
Tourism clusters What do visitors need? Accommodation Where can they get this when they visit Bellaghy, Magherafelt Food and Mid Ulster? Tours Memorabilia How are we going to show Expertise them that they can get these locally? Shopping Crafts How can we extend their stay Travel to and around and their spend locally? Entertainment Authenticity = Experiences
Next steps for the Centre 1. Being prepared: Branding and marketing plan Events programme Operational and staffing needs Seamus Heaney trails around area 2. Exhibition design and implementation 3. Opening mid 2016
Next steps for YOU Developing your own plan Communicating with the Centre re their activities Marketing opportunities Cooperative or collaborative opportunities with other tourisms operators Joining with leaders’ group of operators on 26 th November (Ballyscullion Park, Bellaghy) Sign up for tourism NI mentor support “Learning journey” in January to another literary tourism destination
Over to you……. Stewart Walker
Who Are You? Introductions – 15 seconds on: Who you are and what type of business you have Your location Are they a Seamus Heaney fan / knowledgeable on a scale of 1 to 10 Do you have a connection with him?
“If you build it they will come” Field of Dreams
Over to you….. Your reaction to literary tourism and specifically to the Seamus Heaney proposition
Questions for you 1. HOW CAN YOU / YOUR BUSINESSES BENEFIT / PARTICIPATE? 2. HOW CAN YOUR VISITORS / CUSTOMERS ENJOY AN AUTHENTIC SEAMUS HEANEY EXPERIENCE AND LENGTHEN THEIR STAY?
Questions for you 3. WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO TO MAKE A SEAMUS HEANEY EXPERIENCE MEMORABLE FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS? 4. HOW CAN YOU WORK WITH OTHER TOURISM BUSINESSES TO DEVELOP SEAMUS HEANEY EXPERIENCES
Questions for you 5. WHAT DO YOU NEED FROM MID ULSTER COUNCIL TO HELP YOU DEVELOP YOUR MEMORABLE SEAMUS HEANEY EXPERIENCES? 6. WHAT DO YOU NEED FROM TOURISM NI TO HELP YOU DEVELOP YOUR MEMORABLE SEAMUS HEANEY EXPERIENCES?
Next Steps ….. Sign up to 26 th November at Ballyscullion Park, Bellaghy, 2.00 – 4.00 pm Hear about and get a Tourism NI mentor to help you exploit Seamus Heaney opportunities Help us decide where the learning journey should go
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