If you’ve been listening to the radio lately or watching television, you will notice a big push by Failte Ireland to encourage us to take a break at home and discover the attractions on offer in various parts of the country. The campaign centres around the website www.discoverireland.ie – I think Failte Ireland are doing a great job on this and I must say I’ve been checking out the site having seen the ad on tv and heard the radio spots.

Over the past few weeks I’ve heard a good few of the radio spots and they each focus on a different part of the country. I’ve heard ones for Donegal, Waterford and Galway. There are probably a lot more but they are the ones I’ve heard so far. Each of the ads ends with the address of the website and the desitination – so the Galway ad ends with “Discover more at www.discoverireland.ie/galway” .

I wondered would there be one for County Wicklow. Lo and behold, on the way home this evening a spot airs on Today FM for County Wicklow. Sounds good – mentions golf, fine dining, the scenery, health spas etc. all good. Instead of the website address being given as www.discoverireland.ie/wicklow it was given as www.discoverireland.ie/dublinsdoorstep

When you visit the page you’ll see it has 4 graphical links – Wicklow, Kildare, Boyne Valley and Dundalk. I’m no advertising guru or branding expert but surely if County Wicklow is to be sold as a destination at home it deserves a bit more than being called Dublin’s Doorstep in radio advertising, and then being lumped together on the website with 3 other locations coming under the Midlands/East tourism umbrella.

Ok, so 67% of domestic visitors to County Wicklow are coming from Dublin (source  : Wicklow Tourism Strategy Document), therefore the thinking seems to go that any advertising will highlight the proximity of Wicklow to Dublin. But really, are Dublin people so geographically challenged that they don’t know where Wicklow is and need to be reminded of it in every ad?

Even the landing page with the 4 links is pretty dull. It wouldn’t encourage much by way of click through. So all in all, I really don’t understand why go to the trouble of producing a specific ad for County Wicklow and not have a landing page of www.discoverireland.ie/wicklow and have the excellent video produced by County Wicklow Tourism on there along with relevant links to the special offers and events in the county.

I think they tourism bods have slipped up on this one. What do you think?