Donegal’s new Tourism adverts
June 18th, 2007If you’re looking for the official Donegal Tourism Website, you can find it here: www.donegaldirect.com
From HighlandRadio.com today:
The biggest ever marketing domestic campaign for Donegal got underway today.
A number of TV and radio adverts will be run on both sides of the border in a bid to attract more Irish visitor to this county. The campaign is 50% funded by Failte Ireland, with the remainder raised locally.
A key aim of the campaign, which costs nearly 400,000 euro, will be to highlight the increased accessibility of Donegal.
Just saw the advert on UTV a few minutes. It’s really good; the production is top quality, and the county looks great. It’s one of the standard Failte Ireland adverts - with the same music as the ads on the discoverireland.ie website - and at the end it has the web address http://www.discoverireland.ie/donegal/. As of 8pm today, here’s what we get on that website.
Failte Ireland have launched a E400,000 campaign, half funded by local tourism providers in Donegal, and the main objective is to drive people to a 404 Error Message.
What is particularly annoying is that this address so nearly works. ireland.ie/donegal gives a result (although not as good as ireland.ie/cork) and 2 minutes of work would connect these two addresses.
What can really be said about this? The weekend that just passed saw the Donegal International Rally, a hugely succesful event which brings between 30,000 and 50,000 people to Donegal every year. Over the last two years, we’ve hosted the Fleadh Cheoil in Letterkenny. Donegal has stunning scenery - I don’t mind saying it’s among the most stunning in Ireland - and tons to offer visitors from Ireland and from abroad. This campaign should be setting the tone for a great summer.
I’m so annoyed by this I’m having trouble typing this post. I can only imagine how those in the tourism industry must feel.
PS: I waited from 8pm until 10pm to post this; I wanted to see the advert again just to be sure. It says discoverireland.ie/donegal twice at the end of the ad; that web addresses results in the screen above. This is very, very simple to fix!
Update (10am 19/06): Looks like someone is now working on this. discoverireland.ie/donegal (the address from the Advert) still does not work, but ireland.ie/donegal has now changed. Unfortunately, it now reports an error as well. Compare below with this page for Sligo and Mayo
Update (11:25am 19/06): More work has been done on it. discoverireland.ie/donegal now redirects to irelandnorthwest.ie, a website promoting Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan. ireland.ie/donegal is still not functioning.
Update: To View the ad, click here
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3 Responses to “Donegal’s new Tourism adverts”
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June 20th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Damien, what may be even worse is that the website for ireland.ie, discoverireland.ie and donegaldirect.ie display incorrectly in the various browsers.
Considering the sizable budgets that have been allocated to promote these sites, the money paid for there development and the amount of work put into them by members of the hospitality industry its annoying and frustrating to find these basic issues, which are the ABC of good web design practice, are not followed.
Hopefully they will rectify the situation soon, as I know I’m not the only one to have brought these issues to their attention.
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Haaving just yesterday returned from yet another wonderful holiday in Donegal I was mightily impressed by the ad. on U.T.V. and tonight sat down to view the site and to refer it to friends in South Africa , Canada and Australia . I will say no more !
July 19th, 2008 at 3:04 am
Hello, just stumbled across your site, and I think that website problem has been fixed up now.
I just visited the site, and it looks fine, it redirects to this page:
http://www.discoverireland.ie/northwest/where-to-go/donegal.aspx
We booked our accommodation in Letterkenny, we’re looking forward to a trip to the north west…
Brett.