Seamus Heaney and Literary Tourism November 2015 BTS team Stewart - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Seamus Heaney and Literary Tourism

November 2015

BTS team

 Stewart Walker  Ivan Broussine

Today

 Literary Tourism – examples and

• pportunities

 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

 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 – What is it?

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

 Irish Border Literary trail

1. 45th Patrick Kavanagh Weekend & 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
• f 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

• nce 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  Food  Tours  Memorabilia  Expertise  Shopping  Crafts  Travel to and around  Entertainment  Authenticity

= Experiences

 Where can they get this when

they visit Bellaghy, Magherafelt and Mid Ulster?

 How are we going to show

them that they can get these locally?

 How can we extend their stay

and their spend locally?

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 26th

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 26th 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