Guinness Storehouse Pours More Effort Into Wooing Irish Visitors

Ask a New Yorker how often they visit the observation deck of the Empire State Building, or a Bay Area resident how frequently they get to Alcatraz. For Dubliners, and the Irish in general, there’s a similar answer for the number of trips they take to the Guinness Storehouse each year. The brewery site at St James’ Gate dates back to 1759 and—prior to the pandemic—drew upwards of 1.7 million visitors a year. It’s the top fee-charging attraction in Ireland, ahead of the Cliffs of Moher and the Book of Kells. As recently as 2019, an overwhelming 93% of those tourists came from places other than Ireland. When Catherine Toolan accepted the role of managing director of Guinness’ Irish brand homes, her predecessor Paul Carty had spent more than two decades imploring overseas travelers to visit the sprawling Dublin campus. (The “brand homes” lives up to its plural: it includes the Storehouse, the Open Gate pilot brewery, the recently opened Roe & Co Distillery and Smithwick’s Experience in Kilkenny.) At the beginning of Carty’s tenure, the Storehouse greeted just 300,000 visitors a year. Catherine Toolan, managing director of Guinness’ Irish brand homes. - By Guinness Storehouse Toolan’s previous experience with concessionaire Aramark included building athletes’ villages for the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. Those high-pressure, high-profile jobs prepared her for large settings filled with global tourists. Unfortunately, days before Toolan became the first woman to lead the Guinness Storehouse, Covid-19 arrived in Ireland and closed the facility amid the first of multiple lockdowns. “My first four months was actually sitting at my desk at home and the new city—I’m Irish, but I had never really lived and worked in Dublin—getting to know my team and trying to figure out how the hell we work to [bring people in] because there were no planes in the sky,” she told Adweek. “It’s a building that is used to 6,000 or 7,000 people. It’s a building that needs that kind of vibrancy and energy and life to bring it to life. So I am so appreciative and grateful to hear voices—American voices, French voices, Irish voices—back in the building.” When the Storehouse could reopen for outdoor events and limited admission, Toolan and her team realized that international visitors likely wouldn’t return for some time. The Guinness Storehouse refocused its marketing, sought local artists to paint the grounds and local musicians to play events. Domestic tourists that Guinness once took for granted or ignored entirely grew to 30% of its total visitor base in 2022. That success is serving as a blueprint for other tourist sites that haven’t had to woo the locals in a while. Given the airline cutbacks, canceled flights and long lines awaiting travelers in Europe this summer, Guinness may need to rely on increased local support for the foreseeable future. Adweek spoke to Toolan about winning back Irish visitors, innovating around a pandemic and preparing the modern Guinness Storehouse for life after the pandemic. Adweek: What is the Guinness Storehouse’s place in Irish culture, and how do you increase locals to 7% of your visitors when many are avoiding the 93% coming in from elsewhere?Catherine Toolan: Sometimes when you're in your local city, you don't look at what's on your doorstep. Covid-19 changed that perspective for both visitors and ourselves. It was a great opportunity for us to stop and think about our relevance to the local audience—and to Dublin. Guinness is so synonymous with Dublin: it's been a part of the social history and fabric since 1759. But when we started looking at some of the research about why people didn't visit, they felt it was a bit too touristy because we would have lines of visitors outside. They also found that maybe it was a little bit too expensive. So we opened with free entry to frontline workers. That was amazing because it gave people the chance to come to the Guinness Storehouse that wouldn't have considered it before. During Covid, there was a “Creatives against Covid-19” art competition. So many of the art pieces featured pints of Guinness or Guinness in some way. It made us think, “My God, how lucky we are to have a brand that so resonates with people.” We created that art exhibition in the Guinness Storehouse, we sold the art and invited all the artists then for free. All the money that we raised from that went to charity. Dublin street artist Aches added his pandemic-era message to the Guinness campus' iconic gates. We also worked with Aches, a brilliant street artist in Dublin. Last summer, when we wanted to open up the gates, we created a piece of artwork on the Guinness gates—Together Stronger— which is based on an Irish proverb, ní neart go cur le chéile. We were giving local artists and street artists an opportunity to use the walls and the canvas of the wonderful St. James's Gate and Guinness Storehouse. We also launched an ecommerce site, we hosted virtual events, we worked with Other Voices—which hosts amazing music performances in a little tiny church in Dingle. We opened up the Gravity Bar [a two-room bar area on the Storehouse roof with sweeping views of Dublin] at Christmas, both in 2020 and 21. At that time, nobody could get back home to Ireland, so we hosted a concert of Irish contemporary cultural music. It was streamed live from Gravity Bar. It was an opportunity for people all around the world to kind of connect back to Dublin and connect back to home. The rooftop Gravity Bar was essential to the Guinness Storehouse's pandemic survival. What kind of opportunities did the ecommerce site create for Guinness in Ireland?One of the great opportunities for us was not so much selling Guinness merchandise, but creating artwork with Aches. He reimagined some of the old John Gilroy artwork from the 1960s from our archive—that series of animals, the wonderful toucan that's so synonymous with Guinness—and Arthur Guinness himself. That recreation of a more contemporary look has translated into a really cool retail range [for our merchandise line]. Last year, when we had the words Together Stronger—also one of the first times ever that the iconic black Guinness gates were painted—we created a merchandise range from that. It allowed people to see us in a very contemporary way—and maybe in a different way—it brought color and vibrancy and it’s a story that has come out of the pandemic: it's the stories we will have to tell in the future and tell our great grandchildren about how we dealt with it. Was there a difference in how the domestic audience experienced the Storehouse—and did it affect the marketing?There was the sense, especially for a lot of Irish people that came to visit the Guinness Storehouse, that they definitely do not need to be told how to pour a pint of Guinness. They understand the two-part pour, the 19.5 seconds to let the Guinness settle. The Guinness Storehouse STOUTie uses malt extract to print a patron's selfie onto the head of a pint of Guinness. When we were researching and looking at what consumers want, so many domestic consumers wanted to be able to come and have that perfect pint of Guinness—because it's one of the things they missed most with the pubs being closed and with the Guinness Storehouse being closed. So the perfect pint of Guinness was still the key driver and—most important—it was that sense of comfort: I'm getting something that I'm familiar with. That’s the most iconic drink, but some of our experiments with beers were really popular. At Christmas, we did a plum pudding stout that was really well received. Most recently, through our innovation brewery, we made Guinness Nitro Coffee, a coffee flavored stout—and that is going down so well because the customers absolutely love it. How do you maintain the gains you’ve made in Ireland once foreign tourists return?It's a great question, because it's one we've grappled with a little bit: how do we make sure that we remain relevant to both audiences? We've updated our vision to be a culturally vibrant hub that showcases the magnetic and inclusive soul of Guinness—and its role in modern Irish sociability: appealing to local and international visitors. If it's relevant to a domestic Irish audience—and they are relating to it—we do believe that it will be absolutely something that international audiences love. Bringing to life Irish music and culture in a contemporary way really resonates with Irish and domestic people and Dubliners. We all learned the importance of our five-kilometer market and our 10 kilometer market, no matter what business you are. It’s important that your community feel that they are a part of the story that's as big as Guinness. We hope that, by making that effort, people will feel that they own a little part of Guinness, no matter who they are in the world when they visit. For Travel Brands, Customer Loyalty Is Up for Grabs