Understanding who you want to attract and why they travel is essential to developing campaigns that resonate authentically, rather than superficially
Understanding who you want to attract and why they travel is essential to developing campaigns that resonate authentically, rather than superficially chasing trends. Maxine Hands, Head of Global Media & Digital at Tourism Ireland, outlined how the DMO's "Ireland Unrushed" campaign was built upon rigorous segmentation analysis and market research, translating deep audience insight into a campaign that reframed the slow tourism conversation entirely.
Tourism Ireland operates through 16 offices worldwide, with 168 staff across more than 14 markets. Promoting the tourism sector in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the DMO operates with the singular remit of bringing international visitors to the island. The organisation's core function centres on inspiration, designing marketing campaigns to reach people at key moments that inspire and ultimately drive visitation. This inspiration-led approach demands a deep understanding of the emotional triggers that prompt travel decisions.
Through extensive segmentation work, Tourism Ireland identified "Enrichment Explorers" as their primary target audience. This segment represents travellers who seek discovery and exploration alongside authentic and exclusive experiences that allow them to immerse themselves in their surroundings and form meaningful connections. What makes Enrichment Explorers particularly relevant to Ireland's proposition is their appetite for novelty combined with depth. They crave intellectual and sensory stimulation, seeking out historical sites, attractive cities and towns, museums, galleries and local cultural activities. Yet they equally value connection to place and people. Friendly locals, authentic moments with local communities and the ability to experience the vibrancy of a destination rank highly in their selection criteria.
Tourism Ireland's ongoing sentiment tracking research, conducted through research company RED C, provided crucial intelligence. The June 2025 findings painted a compelling picture of traveller motivations and Ireland's positioning. Exploration emerged as the primary holiday need, with 77% of overseas holidaymakers identifying the discovery of new places, landscapes and cultural activities as their core motivation. Among Enrichment Explorers specifically, this figure rose dramatically to 93%. Similarly, the desire to disconnect ranked as the second most influential factor in destination selection, with 68% of travellers citing the need to unwind and enjoy special moments together.
"Beautiful landscapes and scenery" continued to hold position as the top spontaneous association when overseas holidaymakers think of Ireland. This is also the primary motivator for visiting Ireland, with 32% of potential visitors citing beautiful scenery as the reason for planning a trip. At the same time, the sustainability credentials also registered strongly, with Ireland ranking third among comparable destinations for offering a sustainable holiday at 57%, trailing only Norway and Italy. Perhaps most significantly, 42% of holidaymakers confirmed they consider the environmental impact of where they holiday, up three percentage points from November 2024.
While Enrichment Explorers already associate Ireland with feeling connected to nature, enjoying authentic moments with locals, feeling refreshed in mind and spirit and enjoying a slower pace of life, there are many areas where Ireland delivers a strong proposition, despite them not yet having achieved full recognition. For example, many opportunities arise to strengthen Ireland's positioning around food and drink, architecture, active holidays and intellectual stimulation. Understanding these gaps between perception and reality proves essential in shaping the strategic direction for destination marketing campaigns.
In 2018, Tourism Ireland identified a fundamental cultural tension shaping consumer behaviour. Recognising that hyperconnected lives and on-the-go lifestyles mean people yearn for experiences that genuinely touch them, this insight revealed a gap between how people were living and what they were seeking, and Ireland was uniquely positioned to address it.
Combined with this knowledge, Tourism Ireland articulated a core brand truth: "the island of Ireland is full of joyful, authentic experiences that fill you up by nourishing your soul". This positioning recognised Ireland's inherent strengths (warmth, authenticity, natural beauty and genuine human connection) as antidotes to modern life's relentless pace, with Ireland being a place that restores and enhances your lust for life.
In 2023, this thinking crystallised into the "Fill Your Heart with Ireland" brand platform. The platform captures the emotional resonance of an Irish visit and the sense that time spent on the island leaves visitors fundamentally enriched. This provided the strategic foundation upon which all subsequent campaign activity would be built, establishing a consistent emotional approach to storytelling that Ireland can credibly own in a crowded destination marketing landscape.
The brand platform proves particularly effective because it authentically aligns with Ireland's genuine attributes. When people visit Ireland, one of the key things they love is the connection with people and local communities. This was the articulation of something visitors consistently experience. Taking this approach gives Tourism Ireland a strategic anchor point from which to develop more specific campaign initiatives, ensuring that each piece of content contributes to a coherent overall brand story rather than fragmenting audience attention across disconnected messages.
The sentiment tracking research revealed clear alignment between the emerging slow tourism trend and Enrichment Explorers' core needs. This is because slow tourists demonstrate three defining traits, with Enrichment Explorers significantly over-indexing against all three characteristics:
Sentiment tracking also indicated that 85% of Enrichment Explorers seek to discover new skills when travelling, whilst 82% are looking for travel to broaden their minds. Additionally, 62% of holidaymakers expressed openness to using public transport whilst on holiday, suggesting a genuine appetite for more sustainable modes of travel. This alignment makes slow tourism a credible and powerful strategy for promoting the country.
However, Tourism Ireland recognised significant challenges with how the tourism industry typically approaches slow tourism messaging. Much existing slow tourism marketing appears as a manufactured trend, indistinct to place. Generic imagery of trains winding through landscapes could represent virtually any destination, offering no distinctive reason to choose one country over another. This means there is a high risk of widespread greenwashing, where sustainability claims get exaggerated in ways that invite consumer scepticism. At the same time, slow tourism content rarely represents the local point of view, instead featuring external perspectives telling consumers how to travel rather than genuine local voices sharing their way of life.
Having identified that slow tourism was frequently framed as a reaction: a response to bucket lists, packed itineraries and the pressure to "see and do everything", this framing positioned slow travel as what not to do rather than offering its own compelling vision. With this perspective in mind, Tourism Ireland recognised the need to put its own distinctive lens on the concept to establish strong credibility.
Tourism Ireland's central insight was that slow tourism need not be about "doing less". It could be about "feeling more". This reframe shifted the conversation from restriction to richness, from constraint to connection. Rather than a checklist of sustainable behaviours, Ireland Unrushed promised deeper emotional engagement with place, people and culture. With this framing, Ireland Unrushed could sit at the intersection of three elements, ensuring the campaign was viewed as an authentic expression of Ireland's genuine strengths:
The positioning captured this distinction clearly by focusing on how taking time to immerse yourself enables you to feel more. If visitors step aside and slow things down, they can experience the culture and place so much more deeply. The connection with local communities and with the entire destination becomes richer and more meaningful. Crucially, the "feeling more" positioning connected seamlessly to the overarching "Fill Your Heart with Ireland" brand platform, creating strategic coherence with existing brand narratives.
Ireland Unrushed incorporated ten hero journeys that showcased sustainable transport options and encouraged visitors to spend longer exploring the island of Ireland. These journeys served as anchors for the broader campaign narrative and incorporated industry partners throughout. Representative journeys featured destinations including Westport and the Causeway Coast, each demonstrating how unhurried exploration reveals Ireland's distinctive character.
Tourism Ireland produced over 70 videos for the campaign, adapted for multiple markets and languages. Emphasising tactile visuals and atmospheric music, the creative approach was designed to evoke the sensory experience of travelling through Ireland's landscapes. The videos featured real people and places, bringing to life a sense of peace and tranquillity that helps visitors feel more when experiencing Ireland.
As a digital campaign, Ireland Unrushed was launched across multiple channels, primarily on YouTube and social media. Four weeks of daily posting across Tourism Ireland's global social media accounts was supported by a dedicated Ireland Unrushed landing page, providing comprehensive journey information and trip planning resources. Paid search and email campaigns also played a key role in driving traffic to the landing page.
A strategic partnership with Condé Nast provided additional credibility in positioning Ireland as a sustainable destination and slow travel leader, reaching high-value travel audiences through quality editorial storytelling and publicity. Tourism Ireland also facilitated over 30 media and creator visits from international markets, enabling authentic first-person content creation that extended campaign reach.
With over 275 partners actively involved in campaign delivery, industry engagement also proved exceptional. With stakeholders embracing the campaign concept once they understood the positioning and its strategic rationale, this stakeholder buy-in enabled a fast turnaround time because the idea was embraced wholeheartedly.
As a direct result of the coherent approach, Ireland Unrushed achieved substantial global reach, delivering 120 million quality opportunities across both paid and organic channels. Over 500 social media posts were published in just one month, contributing to more than five million video views. In addition to this, publicity activity generated 4.6 million quality opportunities through media and creator coverage.
Beyond this reach, the campaign also demonstrated exceptional engagement. Over half a million engagements were recorded across organic social and creator content, with a 6% average engagement rate significantly outperforming platform benchmarks. These metrics demonstrate how visitors were really connecting with the message of slow tourism in Ireland. Such an outcome shows how shifting the brand narrative can help destinations make strategic pivots that respond to emerging traveller psychographics and prioritise meaningful immersion.
Head of Global Media & Digital
Tourism Ireland
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