Dear members of communities:

Invest an evening, reading this site and understanding, what happens. Discuss it with members of your community. It's vital.
The future of South-West Kerry depends on the action, you'll take.

My name is Yves Clees, I am 48 and I live here with my family since 2004.
Some people know me as a friend.
Some people know me "as the man with the wrong attidude"
Lot's of people don't know me.

With the very high quality of out-door activities, like angling, golfing, history matters, out-door pursuits like hill-walking, mountaineering, different water-sports and so on, with all the fantastic sceneries in this region, this region is a heaven.
But with all these fantastic opportunities, tourism is completely down at each level.
Might be, there are lots of reasons for this.
Might be, people have been blinded by wrong numbers and statistics in a wrong customership, (see all the traffic of busses during the summer), this might be an interesting xtra for some businesses, but not more. The region can't live on busses, only doing the Ring of Kerry.
1 buss = 50 customer 1000 busses are 50000 customers, it's impressive, but without result.
But if they spend each 10€ for a small meal on her Ring of Kerry trip, it makes 500000€
Better is:
1 customer = 1000€ // 1000 customers are 1000000€ in turnover
I think, you understand, what I mean.
Might be, explosion of prices in the last 10 years, has the consequence of declining numbers of tourists.
Might be, might be, might be and perhaps !!!!
All this together brings the result, we have now. This region is completely down.

Over the last 4 years, I have done lots of analyses about what happens here.
I have done a business course with a very serious business plan, but no help from no-where, not even a serious discussion or questions, it looks nearly, there isn't a will to get customers back.
1) People don't work together as a whole region
2) Where ever you go and discuss about this, you get nearly the same answer: "It will never work". This means, there isn't a will to do it better.
3) All the sites I have visited in this region aren't up-to-date to the new criterion of the new world market, where lots of things have changed over the last 12 month. (a proper language selection for the sites / not over automatic translated sites what gives very often a very bad image)
4) About target markets:
Us Dollar is down, English Pound is down, Rubel is down, Euro is the most powerful currency in the world. This means, holidays gets very expensive for all people coming from non-Euro countries. (There are still the millionaires, but stop dreaming, today they are the billionaires, and we don't have any serious accommodation for this type of customership)
5) Some businesses in this region work on a low level with foreign tours operators. This looks ok, but you have to consider, that the day they don't like you, you are out of program. (You are completely depending on them).

What we have to do, if we want to survive:

1) Creating a site system, which gets performant in the rankings by the national searching machines of the new target markets. (I mean France, the Benelux countries, may-be Germany)
We aren't speaking from Google.com, we are speaking from google.fr, google.lu, google.be, and may-be others.
You have to know, that this is a huge step for the future. Lot's of knowledge is requested on linguistical, technical and marketing level.
My wife speaks 6 different languages, I speak 4 languages.
I work with Gavin Billingham for the technical aspects of the challenge, might be, you weren't able to understand him at his projection in Tech Amergin during the winter month, but for the technical part of this challenge, he is top of the range.
A similar project has been proposed, but as my main sites are running since 3 years, its only a copy of it, probably on the wrong target markets.
Remember the beginnings of this project during the meetings by Leo O'Shea, where we discussed about an out-door festival in Ballinskellig and have a look, where this project is now. It has completely changed the mind. (At this time, you didn't like me, because each time, I asked the same question: Who is going to pay for the promotion? I was the man with the wrong attitude!! But in reality, Ireland has hundreds of these festivals, and promoting it nationally, don't make any sence. At these times, my blog-net was ready to go for promoting on international level, or do you believe, we can't attract customership from the Continent?
At these times, I was in opposition to the idea, to limit it only on the Ghaeltacht area of South-West Kerry. It's too small and we haven't enough accommodations as well as activities in this region.
(St. Finian's, Ballingskellig, only part of Waterville and Dromid) Was my idea really wrong?
My idea was to do something for the whole region of South-West Kerry.
As a result, a project came out about whole Iveragh. That's not,what ne need.
We have do to something for our region, South-West of Kerry.

Remember, one of the meetings at Bay View hotel, when we were explained, that we need one big site for all, when at the end, I proposed to do a blog-net, because I was in opposition to this plan, (I know, with 1 site, we go no-where)
Next time, all my ideas had been taken over and we were explained, that we need lots of sites.
Remember exactly, the way, the show between Gavin and Russell has been done.
At the first meeting, Gavin was too technical and Russell did too much show.
Remember the second meeting, Russell wasn't there. He did his show only a week later.
I ask you, was this really correct, and another important question: How many communities have finally voted for this project, that means, how many communities were present at this vote this day?
I know, different communities have since paid for it and have voted against my project in November.
But that's no problem as you will see on this site.
2) We have to go to the right target markets and to promote in the right way in the right languages in specialized magazines. We have to be able to create impacts. We have do to this not sometimes, but on a very consistant way. We have to do it at least for 3 years, to come back "in the mood of time", this means, the moment the customership is self-identifying himself with our region, the moment he stops speaking about Ireland, but only saying, "I go to Kerry".
Kerry has lost all this. That's why we are dying, that's why the global promoting strategies of the big tourist organisms aren't working in this region.

You see, there are lot of things to do.
I'll do it. A huge amount of work has been done over the last 3 years, (research on international level, running different sites, trying to promote mainly on the french market, trying to get maximum of knowledge about the region to be able to promote it as it's best, developing different promoting campaigns which had all to be cancelled because of no support. All this has been done for free.
(I worked 3 years for free)!!!
Everything, what has been done, was paid by my-own. This has to be said.
To achieve serious results, we have to work together, otherwise, we go no-where.
I invite you now, to go on the site, and to read the content beginning on the bottom of the site upwards. (That's the way it works in blog-sites)

My email adress is: http://www.activeholidayskerry.co.uk/__mailer.php
My phone number is: 086 3231564