Tobago Tourism Agency hosts press trip with award-winning Irish travel writer
Posted Jul 05, 2019
The Tobago Tourism Agency Limited (TTAL) hosted an award-winning travel-journalist from Ireland for a fast-paced press trip from June 11 to 18 2019, in ongoing marketing efforts to promote unspoilt, untouched, undiscovered Tobago in the Irish market.
Press trips, also known as media familiarization trips, are effective ways for travel journalists to become familiar with the product offering of a destination, in order to effectively and compellingly write about their experiences and persuade potential visitors to book.
The Irish press was specifically targeted for this trip as the Irish market is a potentially rich source of business. Its steadily growing rate of outbound travel over the past few years has reached a rate of approximately 1.73 annual overseas trips per head, as opposed to the UK market’s 1.1 annual overseas trips per head.
Additionally, Ireland is an ideal target for visitor arrivals, as based on information from travel agents and operators serving that region, the Irish tourist is well accustomed to travelling to the UK- specifically Manchester- for connecting flights. This augers well for travel to Tobago as Manchester Airport offers direct airlift to the island.
Dublin-based travel-journalist and content creator Mr. Tadgh Peavoy is a prolific writer for many of Ireland’s national and online publications, and is also a lecturer in journalism in Dublin, Ireland.
He has been commissioned by the Irish Daily Star – the 4th biggest news outlet in Ireland – to write a double-page feature on Tobago for their travel section. Mr. Peavoy is also writing an online feature on Tobago for Buzz.ie, the online version of the Irish Daily Star, which achieves around 1 million users a month.
In order to fully capitalize on the opportunity presented by this international press coverage for Tobago, the Agency curated an itinerary for the Irish journalist designed to showcase a variety of Tobago’s natural assets, activities, culinary and cultural experiences, which will then be translated into immersive travel articles for an Irish audience.
Speaking about his week-long experience in Tobago, which was his first time in the Caribbean, Mr. Peavoy enthused about not only the remarkable physical attributes of the island, but also about the friendly locals whose welcoming nature set the destination apart as an ideal vacation destination.
The seasoned travel-writer, who has also visited and written about destinations in Europe, South America and North America, also praised Tobago’s unspoilt, untouched beaches as some of the best in the world, calling the iconic Englishman’s Bay “the postcard-picture definition of tropical paradise”.
His resulting articles about his visit to the destination will be used as inspirational marketing content to drive increased arrivals to Tobago from the lucrative Irish Market, which is in alignment with the Tobago Tourism Agency’s Road Map for Growth.