Is this idea workable? Rejuvinate Ireland's tourism by offering free flights to high

bobbysands81

spending tourists!

http://proposals.yourcountryyourcall.com/ct/ct_a_view_idea.bix?c=D284E307-BEF9-4396-AF6E-14009EAB8647&idea_id=B789571A-F146-4294-BD2F-00BF46024743

Money spent in the Irish tourist industry is incredibly important to every single town, village and city in the State. Every single company in the State benefits either directly or indirectly from tourism. More tourism means that tourists more money spent in cafe's, restaurants, hotels, shops etc... More tourists means that more people are employed to serve their needs. More employment means less Government spending and more Irish people spending more money has a cyclical effect throughout society and greatly helps to improve it.

My proposal is to bring more people to Ireland to holiday and spend money which in turn creates and sustains employment across entire sectors of society. The scheme will fly people to Ireland for free once they stay a minimum of 2 weeks. The benefits to the tourism and all other industries would be immense and provide for a much needed boost. Currently many hotels throughout the country are struggling to stay open, restaurants and pubs are in dire need of extra high spending customers and many people working in the hospitality industries are being laid off.

The sceme would work like this...

The scheme will be implemented by Bord Failte who will target the highest spending visitors to Ireland and fly them to Ireland for FREE. According to Tourism Ireland "American visitors stay longer and spend more per head than visitors from other countries. They spend approximately 60% more than the average, accounting for 20% of spending...

http://proposals.yourcountryyourcall.com/ct/ct_a_view_idea.bix?c=D284E307-BEF9-4396-AF6E-14009EAB8647&idea_id=B789571A-F146-4294-BD2F-00BF46024743

Click the above link to read more

ei.sdraob

if anything the Green's will tax it more

because

Airplanes are evil,
they release CO2 high into atmosphere

murphaph

Doesn't Finland already do this by paying a subsidy to ALL airlines that fly there? The idea of targetting individuals seems to be not a bad one if the sums for Ireland Inc. add up, but do they add up?

The_Honeybadger

Michael O Leary has long been saying that the Irish Government should be paying him to bring tourists into the Country, not charging them a travel tax, definately has some merit, and we really should be looking at selling Ireland abroad like we have never done before, we have more hotel room capacity than we know what to do with, and a massive diaspora all over the world that could be enticed here with low prices and clever marketing. A co-ordinated effort is all that is needed to make cultural tourism a major factor in our recovery.

hiorta

What do the 'high spenders' find once here? Thieves, beggars, rip-off merchants, drunk drivers?
Or, on the other hand....?

bobbysands81

mickeyk wrote: »

Michael O Leary has long been saying that the Irish Government should be paying him to bring tourists into the Country, not charging them a travel tax, definately has some merit, and we really should be looking at selling Ireland abroad like we have never done before, we have more hotel room capacity than we know what to do with, and a massive diaspora all over the world that could be enticed here with low prices and clever marketing. A co-ordinated effort is all that is needed to make cultural tourism a major factor in our recovery.

Anyone got an e-mail addy for Michael O'Leary?!

ardmacha

On a related topic instead of European governments bailing out Greece and aiding airlines after the volcano they should should just block book a load of flights to Greece, or Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. Then loads of Germans, who have a surplus, can have a nice holiday and the Greeks etc can trade out of their debt.

ejmaztec

I can see everyone pretending to be a tourist for free flights, which is only fair, as the tourist board seems to include everybody coming into the country as a tourist, whether they're tourists or not.

cson

No this idea is not workable.

However withdrawing the travel tax and allowing the airports of Ireland compete with each other is a workable and relatively easy solution.

bobbysands81

cson wrote: »

No this idea is not workable.

On what basis?

Amhran Nua

Sell tickets to a national festival like the Tailteann games, then offer air fare discounts to ticket holders.

danman

Would high spenders really care if they got free flights or not?
Surely, the price of a flight means nothing to them.

munstergirl

Don't think anyone could afford hotel room in ireland for 2 weeks, + spending money, was looking at 2 NIGHTS in galway recently €250 room only. (eventually went to clare €40 per room) nice too.
Could go on a 7 day cruise ccl.com for around same price all you can eat too for free.
Hotels in ireland are still ripping people off as soon as some event prices go up, If hotels rooms were about €50 per room not pp people would spend money in hotel bar + resturant and maybe even stay longer.
And attracting "rich" tourists, rich people like bargains too.

dunsandin

munstergirl wrote: »

Don't think anyone could afford hotel room in ireland for 2 weeks, + spending money, was looking at 2 NIGHTS in galway recently €250 room only. (eventually went to clare €40 per room) nice too.
Could go on a 7 day cruise ccl.com for around same price all you can eat too for free.
Hotels in ireland are still ripping people off as soon as some event prices go up, If hotels rooms were about €50 per room not pp people would spend money in hotel bar + resturant and maybe even stay longer.
And attracting "rich" tourists, rich people like bargains too.

Is Clare out foreign now? The last time I went there I didnt hit any border - it must be subtle. Agree that anybody wanting to holiday here must have deep pockets - food, accom etc is deeeaaaarrrr. Car hire is no bargain either - €900/week for a Fiesta anybody?

jimmycrackcorm

Reduce tax / subsidise return flights where the origin is outside Ireland. Anybody coming in will have to spend money here and so it would easily achieve a return on the subsidy.

SkepticOne

If it is a good idea then the first group to benefit would be businesses directly involved in the tourist industry itself: hotels etc. Therefore why don't they get together and subsidise these flights themselves? Only after tourist business owners have shown the colour of their money should the State get involved.

murphaph

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Reduce tax / subsidise return flights where the origin is outside Ireland. Anybody coming in will have to spend money here and so it would easily achieve a return on the subsidy.

What about me? I live in Berlin but when I fly home I spend nothing much as I stay with my family! Free flights would have to be seriously regulated to prevent the likes of me flying home every couple of weeks at Johnny Taxpayer's expense! Thinking more about this, it's probably too complex to run.

cson

bobbysands81 wrote: »

On what basis?

An economic one. The initial cost of setting this up and then on an operations basis would be enormous. Do you have any idea what it costs to run an airline? It'd far outweigh whatever receipts you'd recieve from tourists spending money. It's an ill thought out fantasy solution to something thats not a huge problem. You'd be taking borrowed money from some other Department and throwing it all at tourism. As I've mentioned previously; if you wanted to help the tourism industry here it could be done for little or no cost by removing the travel tax and allowing the airports to compete with one another. What you're suggesting is akin to giving someone a shot of morphine for pain when a panadol would do.

I'm after having another read through it there and its absolutely ridiculous. We'd be operating a discriminatory free flights policy catering for Americans only! There doesn't seem to be any sound thinking basis, research, feasibility done for it bar the fact that Americans spend x amount more than anyone else here.

The gist of the idea seems to be;

Free Flights For Yanks To Ireland
???????????????????????????????
Profit!

Edit: I'm probably beeing a little too harsh above; the gist of the idea is good - bringing money into the economy, which is what we have to do.

Sleepy

Scrapping the travel tax and shoving a few million into a massive 'Come home to your roots' marketing campaign would probably be the way to go about this.

Scotland did this only last year: http://www.homecomingscotland2009.com/default.html

bobbysands81

cson wrote: »

An economic one. The initial cost of setting this up and then on an operations basis would be enormous. Do you have any idea what it costs to run an airline? It'd far outweigh whatever receipts you'd recieve from tourists spending money. It's an ill thought out fantasy solution to something thats not a huge problem. You'd be taking borrowed money from some other Department and throwing it all at tourism. As I've mentioned previously; if you wanted to help the tourism industry here it could be done for little or no cost by removing the travel tax and allowing the airports to compete with one another. What you're suggesting is akin to giving someone a shot of morphine for pain when a panadol would do.

I'm after having another read through it there and its absolutely ridiculous. We'd be operating a discriminatory free flights policy catering for Americans only! There doesn't seem to be any sound thinking basis, research, feasibility done for it bar the fact that Americans spend x amount more than anyone else here.

The gist of the idea seems to be;

Free Flights For Yanks To Ireland
???????????????????????????????
Profit!

Edit: I'm probably beeing a little too harsh above; the gist of the idea is good - bringing money into the economy, which is what we have to do.

The initial cost of setting this up, on a pilot basis, would be very small compared to the potential return.

I've picked Americans for a reason for the pilot scheme - they stay longer and also spend more - yes it's all about profit, that's the whole idea! What's the difference in rolling something like this out for people flying from America only OR Bord Failte taking "Come visit Ireland" stands in American Trade Fairs or ads on TV? This is the same, it's identifying and going after your market.

Aer Lingus and other carriers from Ireland to the States know that they have excess seats on their planes that they cannot sell - the Govt will buy these seats and use it for the scheme. Thus costs for the airline are significantly reduced as they do not need to do anything to sell these seats and can therefore offer them at hugely discounted prices whilst maintaining their profits.

Hotels (of a certain standard) will offer rooms to the scheme on the basis that these rooms are cheaper through this scheme than anywhere else.

All the booking is done through a centralised website thus cutting down on administration and cost - only when someone has booked AND PAID FOR (say) 14 concurrent nights do they get their free flights.

Money begets oney, sustaining and creating jobs in one sector has a huge knock on benefit throughout many other sectors and greatly increases the Govt tax take and therefore reduces Govt spending. If this scheme fails very little money will have been lost by the State - if it succeeds then the benefits of it are utterly massive.

Please, tell me what is "absolutely ridiculous" about the above.

cson

bobbysands81 wrote: »

The initial cost of setting this up, on a pilot basis, would be very small compared to the potential return.

I beg to differ. The intial cost would be huge imo and it's not a guaranteed return. Remember that the euro is trading very high in comparision to the dollar and it's still quite expensive for Americans to come here.

bobbysands81 wrote: »

I've picked Americans for a reason for the pilot scheme - they stay longer and also spend more - yes it's all about profit, that's the whole idea! What's the difference in rolling something like this out for people flying from America only OR Bord Failte taking "Come visit Ireland" stands in American Trade Fairs or ads on TV? This is the same, it's identifying and going after your market.

The Bord Failte stands solicit business; your model actively discriminates other travellers to Ireland in favour of American travellers. On a Foreign Affairs basis it's highly unpalatable. I can't see the EU allowing what is effecitvely a subsidy to allow non EU citizens travel to Ireland.

bobbysands81 wrote: »

Aer Lingus and other carriers from Ireland to the States know that they have excess seats on their planes that they cannot sell - the Govt will buy these seats and use it for the scheme. Thus costs for the airline are significantly reduced as they do not need to do anything to sell these seats and can therefore offer them at hugely discounted prices whilst maintaining their profits.

We buy these seats in advance? This calls for money which we don't have which will have to be borrowed with no guaranteed return. How do those who have paid for their seats with EI feel about this do you think? How do you propose to regulate this system? US Passport only?

bobbysands81 wrote: »

Hotels (of a certain standard) will offer rooms to the scheme on the basis that these rooms are cheaper through this scheme than anywhere else.

How do propose to get the Hotels in on this deal? Where's the incentive?

bobbysands81 wrote: »

All the booking is done through a centralised website thus cutting down on administration and cost - only when someone has booked AND PAID FOR (say) 14 concurrent nights do they get their free flights.

All well and good in theory, but in practice? Is it Bord Failte running this system?

bobbysands81 wrote: »

Money begets oney, sustaining and creating jobs in one sector has a huge knock on benefit throughout many other sectors and greatly increases the Govt tax take and therefore reduces Govt spending. If this scheme fails very little money will have been lost by the State - if it succeeds then the benefits of it are utterly massive..

Er, no. A lot of money will have been pissed away on it if you intend to apply it the way you've outlined.

bobbysands81 wrote: »

Please, tell me what is "absolutely ridiculous" about the above.

All of the above and more. You've provided little basis or figures for your plan bar Americans spend the most money on holidays = therefore give them free flights = Profit! Sadly the real world doesn't work like that. Its a hugely flawed idea however don't be disheartened because it is along the lines of what we need to be thinking to generate more income for the country. Bringing in income from abroad which is the core idea of your plan; is a good idea.

johnnyjb

ei.sdraob wrote: »

if anything the Green's will tax it more

because

Airplanes are evil,
they release CO2 high into atmosphere

And the greens release more Co2 out their ass and especially there mouths, with the garbage they spit out.

bijapos

I think the idea is worth a try, was talking about this 6 months ago with people in the tourist trade.

I think people are complicating things a bit with hotels etc. The way I'd do it would be 100,000 tickets for non-Irish passport holders, either minimum 4 night stay or a Fri and Sat night stay. Talk to Ryanair and Aer Lingus about it, e.g get them to offer 20 of these per flight for a few months and get the govt. to give them €50 return for each passenger.

The government could easily do the same with British Rail and the ferry companies with British tourists, give the tourists free tickets, get BR and the ferry company to split the €50 from the govt between them.

There are two kinds of tourists who I would envisage using most of these tickets.
1. The "weekend crowd", over for a hen, stag or whatever reason who usually stay in hotels and will not move out of the city they are staying in.
2. A more sedate perhaps middle aged or elderly crowd, would tend to rent a car or use public transport once here, would tend to use B&B's more than hotels and move around looking at cultural and scenic sights.

Either way, gets "bums on seats" ie gets people into the country.

You would be surprised at the amount of people who would grab at the chance of a free flight to a holiday destination, its worth a shot, 100,000 tickets at €50 would cost €5,000,000 plus advertising and admin. The majority of people who come here on holidays are a more independent minded lot than others who go to say a 2 week package to Majorca or Tenerife, main thing would be to encourage them to get here in the first place.

bobbysands81

Apologies for the delay in responding but will try to deal with all your points now...

cson wrote: »

I beg to differ. The intial cost would be huge imo and it's not a guaranteed return. Remember that the euro is trading very high in comparision to the dollar and it's still quite expensive for Americans to come here.

Of course there's no "guaranteed return", if there was a worthwhile guaranteed return on anything then we would not need ideas such as this in an effort to boost our economy as we'd all be rich! I understand the Euro is trading high but this scheme would make it cheaper for those tourists who come here the longest and spend the most amount of money.

cson wrote: »

The Bord Failte stands solicit business; your model actively discriminates other travellers to Ireland in favour of American travellers. On a Foreign Affairs basis it's highly unpalatable. I can't see the EU allowing what is effecitvely a subsidy to allow non EU citizens travel to Ireland.

My idea is not a discriminatory one, it targets clients, not discriminates against them. For instance the Australian Govt targetted Irish workers with a trade to go over to Oz and with their expertise and work there - now that's hardly discriminatory is it? It's just going after your target market.

Unpalatable on a Foreign Affairs basis? I fail to see how that stacks up. Ireland actively goes into certain other countries in an effort to entice their people to this State, that is not discriminatory but going after your target market in the most cost efficient way.

You may have a point with the EU subsidy thing though... but other countries such as Spain, France and Finland all prop up their tourist industry by paying subsidies to airlines. Air France reently kicked up a huge fuss with the EU in relation to Ryanair and the subsidies it thinks they get from the French Govt.

cson wrote: »

We buy these seats in advance? This calls for money which we don't have which will have to be borrowed with no guaranteed return. How do those who have paid for their seats with EI feel about this do you think? How do you propose to regulate this system? US Passport only?

Yes - we buy the seats on planes in advance. Of course the money is there for this!!! Speculate to accummulate my friend. The Govt could go to tender with airlines for a certain amount of seats on transatlantic flights at the most competitive prices. What sort of discount could you get for buying a few thousand seats with an airline? Any fool would tell you that the discount would be absolutely massive! A notional % of seats could also be bought from an airline at huge discounts so if a carrier knows that only usually fill 80% of their seats then the Govt could buy the notional remaining 20% at huge discounts as the carrier would know that they would otherwise not sell these seats.

The system would be regulated by a centralsied booking website - there would be no reason why the travellers would have to be American, they would just need to be travelling from America. Remember this is not a necessity of the proposal, it's only an idea for the pilot scheme to hit our target market.

One of the beauties of the system is that the discount is applied to the client in advance of visiting the country thus freeing up more discretionary income for them to spend when they are here. Unlike tax rebates etc... which are time consuming and heavy on staff and administration and pay money back to the traveller upon leaving the country, this scheme is the exact opposite. Giving the traveller money back when leaving the country means the money won't be spent here - giving the money back before the traveller comes here increases greatly the chances of that money finding its way into the Irish economy. Adminsitration costs being kept to a minimum also help to extract full value for this scheme.

cson wrote: »

How do propose to get the Hotels in on this deal? Where's the incentive?

Hotels would fall over themselves to get in on this deal - have you not seen the way hotels are struggling at the moment? There are massive voids in hotel rooms throughout the entire state at the moment. Hotels would have to guarantee that they offer rooms cheaper to this scheme than they can be purchased anywhere else. The idea of this scheme is not to prop up hotels but to help all of our society through job sustainment and creation throughout whole sectors of society... not just one. The spin off from bringing tourists here is massive with money being spent in pubs, shops, travel, restaurants etc... thus having a massive knock on cyclical effect.

cson wrote: »

All well and good in theory, but in practice? Is it Bord Failte running this system?

Yes - that would be the plan.

cson wrote: »

Er, no. A lot of money will have been pissed away on it if you intend to apply it the way you've outlined.

No money whatsoever pissed away. This scheme is very light on staffing and administration and everything about it is designed to get maximum benefit from monies that go into it.

cson wrote: »

All of the above and more. You've provided little basis or figures for your plan bar Americans spend the most money on holidays = therefore give them free flights = Profit! Sadly the real world doesn't work like that. Its a hugely flawed idea however don't be disheartened because it is along the lines of what we need to be thinking to generate more income for the country. Bringing in income from abroad which is the core idea of your plan; is a good idea.

You still have not pointed out the specific flaws bar saying you don't think it will work, that's too general. You haven't told me why it won't work. Will the flights be too expensive? Will the return be too little? Will hotels not be interested? You haven't told me...

Personally I think it will work and to be honest of course the whole reason for the scheme is profit and to sustain and create wealth in the state - you can't criticise me for wanting to do that yet at the start give out that there's no guaranteed return, you're contradicting yourself there imo.

Money begets money and that becomes a cycle. Think about it... if bringing a few thousand extra tourists to this country means a few hundred people keep their jobs then that's a few hundred people not getting Social Welfare payments, that's a few hundred people spending money that in turn is sustaining and creating other people's jobs who then are not getting Social Welfare payments and who then go out and spend the extra money they have which in turn has the same cyclical knock on effect... and so the cycle continues...

You say it can't be done, I say why not

Note to other - if you like my idea - please vote for it! Thanks.