Ireland Home of Halloween campaign 2024
Tourism Ireland promoted Halloween as an iconic reason to visit the island of Ireland in autumn 2024. A multi-market campaign went live in September, aiming to reach potential visitors in time for autumn holiday booking timelines. Halloween is a favourite calendar moment in many countries around the world, yet not everyone knows that it originated on the island of Ireland around 2,000 years ago in Celtic culture.
The campaign launched with a 60-second film which is filmed partly in black and white – to bring a sense of history and distinctiveness and to showcase Ireland in a way that completely stands out from other destinations – and then bursts into colour with modern-day festivities. Landscapes are featured from around the island of Ireland, including Poulnabrone Dolmen, the Giant’s Causeway, Derry-Londonderry, Craggaunowen Crannóg and Newgrange. The campaign ran on a mix of TV, cinema and digital channels in 13 key tourism markets including Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Nordics, Austria Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.
The video campaign achieved results reflecting a strong audience response: 14 million views of the launch film on English language YouTube alone and 255 million views of videos across languages and channels (TV, cinema and digital). Among those who’ve seen the campaign, there is now 2X the level of recognition that Halloween began in Ireland and seven out of ten said they’re more likely to want to visit (source: Kantar research). The campaign drove 431,000 research sessions about Halloween festivals and activities on our international website, Ireland.com.
As well as our video campaign, we also invited journalists and broadcasters from around the world to visit, to experience Halloween on the island where it all began. They reported on festivals like Macnas, Púca, Derry Halloween, Bram Stoker and more. Activity included live radio and satellite TV broadcasts.
Tourism Ireland’s publicity teams have been communicating our Home of Halloween message since January, creating 195 million ‘opportunities to see’ between January and October. In the United States, our Halloween festivals featured on 32 TV channels across the United States (including CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox), reaching over 50 million. In Great Britain, up to 900,000 viewers across Britain saw the Derry Halloween festivities on 30th October on ITV’s daytime TV show This Morning, with filming supported by Tourism Ireland. A Swedish radio station, called Rock Klassiker, broadcast live from Derry Halloween on 31st October and 1st November, reaching around 1 million listeners. Almost 800 of our key travel trade and media partners attended in-market Halloween events and webinars hosted by Tourism Ireland in nine markets – with the goal of encouraging tour operators to programme Halloween and autumn-themed travel to Ireland in their future tours, as well as encouraging media to engage with our Halloween story.
