A decade of success for the Wild Atlantic Way

A long and winding road – the jewel of the Irish tourism industry –  has transformed the sector for Ireland’s West Coast, writes CONOR POWER

IT’S hard to believe that the Wild Atlantic Way is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Because, of course, it feels like it has always been there.

And it has – only the branding and packaging of this great resource is the new bit. And that, in a nutshell, is what tourism marketing is all about: looking at what you have to offer the public, branding it, packaging it up and sending it out into the wide world in the hope that people will like it.

In the case of the Wild Atlantic Way, people have loved it from even before it was a polished product. The package was barely put together when all those living along the route were already sold on it. Like one of those ideas that you wonder why nobody thought of before, the take-up amongst the service providers along the WAW was immediate, as Josephine O’Driscoll, Wild Atlantic Way manager at Fáilte Ireland, recalls.

Terri Kearney believes the Wild Atlantic Way concept has helped to capture the imagination of visitors.

‘There were a lot of conversations in terms of the concept; what it would be called, how far it would go, etc,’ says Josephine. ‘Once the name was settled on and once we decided where the start and the end points were, that was then when we then went out and started talking to people about it.’

There followed a series of ‘town hall meetings’ along the decided route. The feedback was immediate and extremely enthusiastic.

‘The communities were running ahead with the idea even before we had a chance to get a lot of the signage along the route,’ she remembers.

There were a number of other considerations for the title, including the Wild Atlantic Drive and the Wild Atlantic Coast, but the (then) chief executive of Fáilte Ireland, Seán Quinn, came back after a weekend of reflection with a firm decision that the all-encompassing word ‘Way’ was the only logical choice, because all other options implied a narrowing down to some specific activity or call to action.

At the Skibbereen Heritage Centre, manager Terri Kearney has noticed how the Wild Atlantic Way has unearthed a lot more of the wayward individual tourist.

‘We haven’t geared anything towards the Wild Atlantic Way as such, but we’ve certainly benefited from it,’ says Terri. ‘I would say that an awful lot of the continental visitors that we’re getting are ones that are following their own Wild Atlantic Way. A lot of them are doing it in camper vans, for example. They’re “free movers”, if you like. They’re different to an awful lot of visitors that we might get who’d be on pre-arranged tours.

‘It does encourage people with a sense of adventure and who want to get off the beaten track; people who don’t want to just follow the main routes of the Wild Atlantic Way, but who want to go off that track as well.

‘There’s a huge recognition of it amongst tourists – you can see that. A lot of them remark upon it; that they’re doing the Wild Atlantic Way. So it’s certainly an effective marketing strategy – 100%.’

For a business such as Atlantic Sea Kayaking, the Wild Atlantic Way was a marketing initiative that paid dividends, with a philosophy that was very much in line with their own. Not only has it brought an ever-rising wave of discerning tourists to explore our Atlantic coastline, it has also encouraged people to work together more than they used to.

‘We’re 30 years in business, so we were established before the Wild Atlantic Way came along,’ says owner Jim Kennedy, ‘but it has strengthened our belief in what we do and in how special a part of the world this is. It has also given us power, such as the formation of Ireland’s Association for Adventure Tourism. That was born out of the Wild Atlantic Way and Fáilte Ireland bringing us off to the World Summit of Adventure Tourism. None of that would have happened were it not for the Wild Atlantic Way as a focal point.

‘I think that with the advent of the Wild Atlantic Way, it has encouraged people to work in a more symbiotic way. Before, we used to be a bit afraid of that, but it’s happening a lot more now.’

Bantry Bay Boat Hire is the kind of business that hadn’t been there before the Wild Atlantic Way, but which feels like it arrived on the tourist scene, riding the wave created by the tourist route.

‘This is my seventh season,’ says Bantry Bay Boat Hire owner Aaron O’Sullivan. ‘When I started, I always had the idea that the target was to highlight the Wild Atlantic Way from a different perspective. While people see it from the road and look outwards, my view was to look upon the Wild Atlantic Way from the water side.’

Bantry Boat Hire arrived on the tourist scene riding the wave created by the tourist route. ‘Our customers come from all corners of the earth to do the WAW, so it’s been a roaring success,’ said owner Aaron O’Sullivan.

It’s a formula that has worked well, the idea of getting explorers of the Wild Atlantic Way out on the water in speedboats or kayaks seeming to scratch a particular itch in the tourism market. The company has expanded its offering and its business year-on-year, Aaron says.

‘Our customers come from all corners of the earth to do the WAW, so it’s been a roaring success … I think that, after Covid as well, a lot of people had it in their mindsets that they didn’t want to be anywhere crowded and where better to be to avoid the crowds than out on a kayak in the middle of Bantry harbour or kayaking to Whiddy Island for a pint?’

‘The Wild Atlantic Way was about bringing together all of the great things that we have in West Cork and Ireland, and marketing it under one umbrella,’ says Josephine O’Driscoll. ‘If you think of a pearl necklace, we have all these pearls along the coastline. This was the thing that threaded them all together and put them into this pearl necklace of different things you can do along the Wild Atlantic Way.’