From Interruption to Engagement

Guinness Visitor Centre, Dublin
Destination/experiential branding

Firmly established as Ireland's No.1 Tourist Attraction, now known as Guinness Storehouse (The Guinness Visitor centre http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/travel/attractions/museums/guinness.shtm link!) attracted 570,000 visitors in 2001- a remarkable accomplishment for the venue in its first year of business. The continuing success of the Visitor Experience is reflected in the fact that the Storehouse will be welcoming its millionth customer in the coming months.

Many different elements come together in this extraordinary building - a unique visitor experience, retail store, gallery and exhibition spaces, a first class events venue, restaurant and bar areas, the Guinness archive and state-of-the-art training and conference facilities. Guinness Storehouse, in Dublin, re-imagines how a brand can perform for customers, employees, and the community.

1. Tourist Attraction:

   Cost of project

   Sunday Business Post reported the cost of the project at £35 million. The Baltimore Sun, reported that Guinness, one of the oldest and best-known companies in Ireland, spent $40 million to transform a vacant, outdated fermentation plant into a seven-story visitor and conference centre. Scotland on Monday, the Guinness Storehouse was built at a cost of £30 million. (links to any of these articles?)

   The Storehouse's revenue streams

   Guinness Storehouse is a working building, offering the Irish and International business communities an unparalleled range of unique rooms, spaces and facilities to hold seminars, meetings and events of almost any size and type. It provides an infinitely flexible space that can adapt itself to suit receptions for 20 to 1,200, private dining occasions, parties, product launches, fashion shows, lectures, conferences, or anything else you wish to organise.

   Aine Friel, the Storehouse's marketing manager explains: Everything we do must be aligned to the global brand and increasing awareness and driving sales of Guinness. We can prove that we recruit 45,000 new Guinness drinkers per year, who've never drunk Guinness before and have their first pint in the Storehouse.

   In its first year, Guinness Storehouse became Ireland's leading tourist attraction, visited by 570,000 overseas visitors.

   The company previously received tourists in an old vat house nearby. Attendance had grown to almost a half-million a year there, much more than the palce could handle. So company officials brainstormed, deciding in 1996 to renovate a store house that had been empty for about a decade.

   What others say about Guiness Storehouse:

   • Brand strategy: Guinness Storehouse had grown to become Ireland's number one tourist attraction, welcoming its one millioneth visitor in September 2002.
   • Baltimore Sun: The site drew nearly 600,000 people in its inaugural year, which was hampered by tourist fears over agricultural hoof-and-mouth disease and the September 11 terrorist attack in the United States. Guinness expects eventually to reach 1 million visitors a year.

   Around 42% of all holidaymakers to Ireland come to the Guinness Storehouse, proclaims Paul Carty, the attraction's general manager. This compares to our estimate of 38% of London tourists who visited Madame Tussaud’s.

   Brand Strategy calculates that The Storehouse attracts around 700,000 visitors a year, 60% from the UK and 20% from the US. It also lures an additional 100,000 corporate clients and operates as the site for Diageo's internal training centre. It broke even on its first year and has been in profit since its second year of business

   The cost of entry for adults is euro13.50, for children between 6 and 12 euro3.00, for family (2 adults, 4 children*) euro28.00, for children under 6 FREE, for Senior Citizens euro6.50, for students with ID under 18 euro6.50, for students with ID over 18 euro9.00 and for a group of 15 euro12.00.

   Guinness merchandise includes its key attractions like conference and training facilities as well as public bars, restaurants and exhibition space.

   The following snippets provide some information on the subject:

   • Visitors are greeted by the tumping drums of a celtic river dance. A roaring man-made waterfall surges over slabs of Lucite suspended overhead. A bank of monitors flash images at the speed of REM sleep that are quintessential Ireland - emerald hills, a raucous rugby stadium, a sheep herder. Escalators and moving walkways whisk visitors up a seven-story hive of glass and green I-beams to various exhbits and eventually, to the 130-foot-high Gravity Bar.
   • Every visitor receives a plastic lozenge that encases a dark drop of Guinness. It can be traded at the end of the tour for a free pint of stout or soda. From an island work station in the middle of a large, circular room, bartenders serve 2,000 pints on a weekend day - twice that many on St. Patrick's Day.
   • An exhibition tells the story of brewery founder Arthur Guinness and shows visitors what goes into making and distributing Guinness using multimedia, film and large-scale graphics applied directly to the interior walls of the building. A six-storey glass atrium shaped like a giant pint has been carved into the middle of the building- at the head of which sits the Gravity bar, offering drinkers a 360-degree view of Dublin.

2. More than a tourist attraction:

   Guinness Storehouse, a fermentation building converted into a visitor centre and venue in Dublin, is an example of how Guinness Storehouse has combined live events, architecture, design, advertising and other skills to create an overall brand experience that is imaginative.

   The storehouse includes conference and training facilities for the Irish business community, three public bars and a gallery and exhibition space. Young Dubliners come to Storehouse for one off events, concerts, parties and exhibitions.

   Conference facilities

   The conference facilities are available for up to 100 delegates. Attractions include the Visitor Experience and the Gravity Bar. Day delegate rate including all catering from pounds 60 (Irish).

Return on investment?

According to brand strategy, Guinness Storehouse broke even on its first year and has been in profit since its second year of business.

Guinness' 'measure of success'

Aside from visitor numbers, the success of Guinness Storehouse is measured in terms of affinity - an internal measure created by Diageo. According to their definition, affinity leads to increased awareness and admiration of the drink.

Paul Carty, the attraction's general manager, believes that Guinness's link to sociability and entertainment make the brand a natural fit to extend into experiences. This isn't Guinness’s core business but we're adding to the success of Guinness's brand.

Carty explains his ambitions: We're going back to the drawing board. We want to attract one million annual visitors, we want to be the world's must-see-now attraction not a once in a lifetime attraction and we want to be the world's favourite brand experience.

Has it achieved its objectives?

According to Irish Times, the Guinness Storehouse visitor centre also turned in a healthy performance, in 2002 reporting 16 per cent growth in visitor numbers despite a 5 to 10 per cent drop in the number of tourists

How does Guinness use Storehouse for marketing activity?

The Guinness Storehouse devotes nearly a whole floor to memorabilia with the popular Toucan mascot "Tookie", to commemoratives from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II 50 years ago and the birth of Prince William in 1982. There is an enormous cylinder to which visitors can affix their own fan mail.

The Future

More improvements and investment in the attraction are in the pipeline. Guinness Storehouse has just rewarded Imagination [is this a company?] with the project of updating the visitor centre. It will be creating new exhibitions to represent Guinness on a more global level and turning the centre into a more enriching experience for the visitor.

Source: RocSearch 2003