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No Outdoor Christmas Market in Dublin? What’s going on?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
No Outdoor Christmas Market in Dublin? What’s going on?

I am VERY passionate about Christmas Markets and if you are a Dublin Event Guide Reader for a while, you probably know that already. I can absolutely not get it why Dublin is incapable of having a good Christmas Market and interestingly, it seems that Galway, Cork, Waterford and Belfast ARE able to have a market that people like and that reliably happens year after year.

This year, there will not be an outdoor Christmas Market at all in Dublin and that is frankly just not good enough for a City that is quite dependent on tourism. I wrote a long piece about the failed St. Stephen’s Green Market in 2014 and about the “I believe in Christmas” market in 2015, that decided the “I believe” part of the name should be trademarked and that called itself “Christmas Tree & Village” not Christmas Market here: www.joergsteegmueller.com/2015/12/08/ireland-and-christmas-markets-it-cant-be-that-difficult/

Both markets were designed by Event Management people, NOT by Christmas Market experts and both markets didn’t deliver. After just one year the “I believe” market is gone again with the result that in 2016, Dublin has NO Christmas Market. Yes, there are some weekend markets with a Christmas theme, but this is not what tourists are interested in and it really isn’t good enough for us living in Dublin either.

So why are they failing? Because the focus is wrong, the location is wrong, food and drink doesn’t get enough attention and they are every time run by the wrong entity/organisation.

1) Focus: The outdoor markets in Dublin have never focused on the visitors, they always seem to focus in maximising the money taken as fees from the traders. This means that there is no proper product selection, but you sometimes find the weirdest “non-Christmas Market-worthy” products at stalls.

2) Location: George’s Dock is a nice venue, but for a Christmas Market it is too far out. It has to be in easy walking distance from the City Centre so that people can drop in and out during their shopping and then finish the day with good food and drink at the market. Dublin has a problem because there is no place in the City Centre. But you need a square or plaza of some sort to build a Christmas village. A long row of stalls (like at St. Stephen’s Green) will NEVER create the atmosphere that is needed.
There are in my opinion two suitable locations already in the City Centre, but only one of them might get the ok from the responsible authorities. In future I see one other area that could be suitable, but it will take a few years until it is available.

3) Food and Drink: It is soooo important to have good food and at least Gluehwein at a Christmas Market. At St. Stephen’s Green, Dublintown screwed up by giving the contract to run 2 or three food outlets to ONE Catering Company. Boring delivery, no variation and no competition. The food and drink offering was totally underwhelming. At some of my favourite markets, I would say at least 50% of the stalls are food and drink stalls. Alcoholic Gluehwein, but also non-alcoholic Glueh”wein” are sold and the food variety is vast. Result: People stay there until late and have their dinner at the market and meet with their friends for an evening out.

4) Organisation in charge: In Dublin it seems that every time the task to run a market is completely handed over to an event management company and the real organiser is getting out of the way. The result is that it is run exactly as any other event, not as an experience or something somebody is passionate about. In all towns I know, the Christmas Market is run by the Town/City Council who have passionate employees working on it really hard. In Dublin, Dublin City Council couldn’t care less about a Christmas Market in Dublin and IF they did care, they would just get an event management company again and not be involved themselves. The passing of responsibility to people that don’t care about this event more than the next 25 that they have to manage has to stop. Dublin Tourism or the Events section in Dublin City Council should run it with the explicit intention to make it an amazing experience for the visitors AND to run it from now for at least 10 years EVERY year not primarily to make money, but because a capital of a European city is expected to have a good quality market in the pre-Christmas period.

There are a few other little bits that are mentioned in the post that I linked to above, but if these few points get the right attention, we could have a great Christmas Market for the long term future. Without giving attention to them, we will have one failure after the next, like we did for the last 5 or so years.

Did I mention that I am very passionate about Christmas Markets? Now you see! ;-)

P.S. I just found what must be one of the most delusional quote of the season, considering the poor show of Dublin: DublinTown CEO Richard Guiney said: “I can’t think of anywhere that does Christmas as well as Dublin.”

Dublin, Odd, Tourism, , ,

Angry journalist suggests tourists in Dublin should go home!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Angry journalist suggests tourists in Dublin should go home!

The Irish Independent published an article on Thursday 17 November, in which Ita O’Kelly, an angry and seemingly narrow-minded journalist suggests that Dublin is chocked by too many tourists and therefore the tourists should go home.

Oddly the whole article doesn’t contain one strong argument that supports her opinion. She claims that it is the fault of all the tourists that Dublin has way too many coffee shops and totally ignores that the many coffee shops have queues out the door every single day of employees on their lunch breaks (tourists don’t wear suits!). Then she has an issue with “falling over” people reading maps when she just wants to go from A to B. Somehow she also blames tourists for the fact that a “vast number of people are begging on the streets”. But there is absolutely no correlation between these two and no evidence is provided how tourists (who in most cases are a lot less “generous” than Irish people when it comes to beggars) have put these beggars in the street. Street “entertainer” (the “” are put in by her) are allegedly also only there for the tourists and the nonsensical (and factually incorrect) sentence “When the city hosts free music events for its citizens, it’s virtually impossible to get a seat as the tickets have been snagged by the tourists.” just crowns a rubbish article. (Most free music events that “the city hosts” are not ticketed and are certainly not intended exclusively for its citizens. And if tickets have to be pre-booked or if they are available at the venue, tourists would never get priority over non-tourists.

Ita O’Kelly, who also seems to be angry about the impertinence of people preferring gluten-free food even if the have no medical condition, wants her Dublin back with no ice-cream parlours, no coffee shops and with a few billion Euro less per year (the money made from tourists in whole Ireland is 7bn per year). She doesn’t say “Make Dublin great again!”, but her thinking seems to be as open minded as Trump’s who wants to “Make America great again”

The oddest part about this rubbish is that the Irish Independent published it and most likely even paid for it!

Dublin is a cool place and visitors as well as inhabitants from all over the world are very very welcome!

Dublin, Irish, Odd, Society, Tourism, ,

It is “country” not “jurisdiction”!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
It is “country” not “jurisdiction”!

Language is a an odd thing! There seems to a sheep effect sometimes when someone uses a term that we think we SHOULD use. Years ago it was the term “non-national”. It was used initially in a misguided effort to be more inclusive by avoiding words like “foreigner” or “alien”. Not the term “non-national” made no sense whatsoever because nearly all “non-nationals” were very much nationals, just not nationals of Ireland, but of other countries. Oddly “non-nationals” was usually only used for non-Irish-nationals from outside the EU. So, it seems we had different classes of “non-nationals”. Luckily the term is hardly used anymore, which is a good thing.

But there are many other words that are used in odd circumstances. “Jurisdiction” is one of them!

Last week, the Irish Independent wrote “A slump in Sterling against the euro prompted hordes of shoppers in this jurisdiction to head across the Border for their pre-Christmas shopping.”

And it quoted Ash Ireland chairman Dr Patrick Doorley, who said “[…] There are many examples of jurisdictions where tobacco price has been increased for health reasons and smuggling simultaneously tackled and reduced – such as Australia, New Zealand and Spain.”

Why is the word “jurisdiction” used in this case and not the word “country”. Every country is a different jurisdiction by definition of sovereignty. The only difference is where a big country, e.g. the USA, can have different laws in different parts (states). In Ireland we don’t have different laws in different parts of the country, so the use of “jurisdiction” makes absolutely no sense.

And just in case “jurisdiction” is used by some to avoid having to call Northern Ireland a different country than the Republic of Ireland: No matter what your opinion is about the political divisions on this island in the future, currently the Republic of Ireland is a completely different country than Northern Ireland and until that changes, the hordes of shoppers in this COUNTRY headed across the border (there is a big hint in this word!!).

Irish, Odd, Politics, Society,

Odd behaviour of Ryanair passengers? Are they all beginners?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Odd behaviour of Ryanair passengers? Are they all beginners?

I haven’t used Ryanair for a while. Not because I have a problem with the company, but because they decided to stop flying to where I would like to go in Germany, so I had to go back using Aer Lingus. But this week I flew to Italy and Rome Ciampino was the most suitable airport to fly to. Ryanair flies there and the prices were ok, so we were in business.

Last time I flew with Ryanair they didn’t have any seat allocation yet, but it was a first come, first served approach when you get into the plane. That has changed now and you get seats allocated or (for a surcharge) can select them yourself. The consequence of this is that EVERY single person entering that plane knows exactly that there is a seat waiting for them and they know exactly where this seat is.

So can anybody explain the scenario in this picture to me? Why do approximately 150 people jump up from their seat as if someone has put needles under their backside as soon as boarding of this plane is even hinted?

Everybody has a seat assigned, so what do you gain by standing there for 10 minutes before the hinted boarding actually starts? Why do people still jump up as if it was a first come, first served seat allocation?

Is it just the space for the hand luggage that gets them to be mad impatient? We got on board as one of the last ones and there was still space for hand luggage.

Human beings are the most irrational species it seems! ;-)

Dublin, Odd, Society, Tourism,

Rewards for people who left the country – Kick in the ass if you weathered the storms!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Rewards for people who left the country – Kick in the ass if you weathered the storms!

One of my pet hates is if a company promotes a really attractive Special Offer and then it says in the small print that it is only available to new customers. It is really a kick up the backside of the loyal long term customers who ensured that the company kept going. Instead there should always be an attractive offer for existing customers IN PARALLEL when a new customer offer is promoted. That offer for existing ones doesn’t have to be the same as for the new recruits, but it should also be attractive.

Bad enough when a phone or Internet company does it or a bank or insurance.But now it gets worse.

The bright lights in our current government are thinking about giving a tax discount to some of the people that have left the country to attract them to come back. Many who left, did so to earn more money elsewhere and many who stayed endured a fair amount of hardship during the recession years in Ireland. And by rewarding the ones who earned more away if they come back is really adding insult to injury.

It certainly makes sense to try to get people to come to Ireland if we have jobs here, but if a reward is considered for returning workers, then the ones that kept the country going shouldn’t be rewarded for their part in the recovery.

www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/tax-rate-returning-emigrants-ireland

Economy, Odd, Society, Taxes, ,
 
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