How the Irish National Stud Made Tourism a Major Source of Farm Revenue

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00:00The Irish National Stud has long been revered for its focus on education and tourism, but

00:09how has that division of their operation evolved in recent years?

00:12Cathal Beale tells us more.

00:15Tourism at the National Stud, it was sort of a by-product, really, in that we had a

00:20Japanese garden, and 40, 50 years ago, people used to hop over the wall to see it.

00:26It evolved over time where people were allowed onto the farm side of the business, and then

00:30over the last 10, 12 years, we've invested pretty heavily in it as a real pillar of what

00:37we do now in terms of how we tell the story, but also in terms of driving revenue.

00:42Back in 2015, 16, we were doing somewhere around 110, 115,000 visitors annually.

00:47We're up to, in 2023, 150,000 plus now, so that's made up of about 60,000 international

00:55visitors and 90,000 domestic visitors, because there's more stuff to see, there's more things

00:59to do, new retail arm, new resource experience, et cetera.

01:03It's taken 20, 25 years of tweaking it, of working out how to do it, to get to the stage

01:09where today we're up there in terms of the top 20 visitor attractions in the country.

01:15I think even more importantly for us, the animals enjoy it in a funny way, so when like

01:20a foal here, they associate crowds and people with positivity.

01:25It's not something that they're scared of because they're used to the noise now.

01:29Our strategic plan really is that tourism, as a pillar of what we're doing, should get

01:36itself to 33, 40% of the entire business.

01:39Even in the last six or seven years, like stallion income has always been our fundamental

01:43driver, and it always will be extremely important, obviously, but when you're in a situation

01:48where you're reliant so heavily on one horse, as we have been in Invincible Spirit for such

01:53a long time, it's not a safe place to be for a business to have 60, 70% of your entire

02:00business reliant on a living, breeding animal.

02:04With that 20-year gap of where we haven't been able to find a new stallion to take over

02:10from Invincible Spirit, hopefully we're getting close to finding him in Phoenix, Spain.

02:16He's had a super year, and I think everybody knows and agrees that they're all going to

02:21be even better as three-year-olds on the cover of his biggest book of mares, actually, this

02:25year, so it's really testament to how the market has reacted to him, so let's hope the

02:30market is right.

02:32It's the honor of my working life to have been the chief executive here for the period

02:35I've had, and I'm thrilled that the board has decided, with the government, has decided

02:40to give me an extra three years.

02:43It's about trying to finish what we started, I suppose, although the job, look, it's never

02:47finished, but we've evolved into education and tourism, and tourism in particular, to

02:53try and tell the story as much as anything else and allow people to come and see horses.

02:59So we're talking about the social license of our sport, and it's something that we're

03:03all passionate about.

03:05The way to, I think, move the dial on that is to get people in front of horses.

03:09They're a bigger star than any of us people can be, or advocates that we can be for the

03:14sport.

03:15If you get people in the presence of horses, they'll do the heavy lifting for us, so it's

03:19become even more important than we imagined it ever would be.