Maps, directions, and
the getting there experience

Let me ask you something, and be honest.

Have you ever gone looking for somewhere new in this country?

The sat-nav takes you confidently down a boreen that narrows and narrows and then turns into somebody's yard. There is a dog. You reverse the whole way back out. You are in roughly the right townland, you are fairly sure of that much, but nothing looks like anything. You pull in and check the website on the phone and there is nothing on it that helps you one bit.

And you eventually arrive, twenty-five minutes late, in a considerably worse humour than you set out in.

That is the experience a fair number of your visitors are having on the way to you. And it colours everything that happens afterwards.

A guest who arrives frustrated, who spent the last half hour of the journey tense and second-guessing themselves, walks in a completely different person to one who found you handy and parked without any bother. You can see it in how they are with you for the first ten minutes. And sometimes you can see it later in what they write.

The journey to your door is the first part of the experience.

Make it a good one.

Now, I want to acknowledge something. Next to photography and booking systems and all the rest of it, directions can seem like a small detail. And in one sense, it is. But the things that make people feel genuinely looked after are nearly always small details done properly. And getting to you is the one part of the whole day where you have no control at all, unless you take the trouble to help.

Irish addresses are famously hard work for a visitor. The Eircode helps enormously, but it does not solve the last bit, and the last bit is exactly where the sat-nav lets people down. Those final few hundred metres, where the turn is unmarked and the sign is behind a hedge and the only real landmark is a gate that everybody local knows about.

So there are two things we recommend every single time. An embedded map, and written directions. And they do completely different jobs.

The map handles the broad strokes. It gets somebody into the right area and gives them the confidence they are pointed the right way. But it very often falls apart in the last stretch, particularly in rural areas where the mapping just is not that precise.

The written directions handle the last mile. And I do not mean turn-by-turn instructions. I mean the kind of directions a neighbour would give you.

After the stone bridge, take the second left. You will see our sign on the right-hand side. If you come to the crossroads with the old phone box, you have gone too far, turn back.

That kind of specific, local, human detail is the difference between somebody finding you easily and somebody driving past your entrance three times, getting crosser each time.

And here is the trick that hardly anybody does, and it works better than anything else on this list.

Put up a photograph of the turn.

Stand where your visitor will be, in the car, coming from the direction most of them come from. Take a photograph of what they will actually see at the moment they need to make the decision. The gap in the hedge. The gate. The sign, if there is one, and how easy it is to miss.

Then put that photograph on your directions page with one line under it. This is the turn, coming from the Killarney side.

It sounds almost too simple to bother with. But a photograph removes all doubt in a way that words never quite manage, particularly for somebody who does not have the language and is already half-lost. They see it coming up, they recognise it, and they turn with confidence.

And if the approach is different from the other direction, take a second photograph. It is ten minutes of your life and it will save a hundred people twenty minutes of theirs.

Beyond the directions themselves, there are a few other things that matter more than you would think.

Parking. Overseas visitors in particular really appreciate knowing in advance whether there is parking, how much of it, and where exactly to leave the car. It sounds like nothing. It removes a specific low-level anxiety that has been travelling in the car with them since they set off.

Public transport, if it is relevant to you. Somebody without a car needs to know whether it is even possible to get to you, and if so, how. A line about the nearest bus stop or station, with an honest word about the walk or the taxi at the other end, is worth its weight.

And your Eircode. Put it up prominently and label it clearly. Most Irish visitors will use it straight away. A lot of international visitors are only learning that such a thing exists. Put it beside the directions where they will find it.

Every one of those small things removes a small worry and adds a small bit of confidence. And the cumulative effect of a guest who arrived unhurried, parked easily, and knew where to walk when they got out of the car, is a guest who is already ahead of where they would otherwise have been when they meet you.

So what can you do this week? Three jobs.

The first one. Go to your own directions page as a first-time visitor would. Is there a map on it? Are there written directions covering the last stretch specifically? Is the Eircode there and clearly labelled? If any of those are missing, it is under an hour of work and it helps every visitor you will ever have.

The second. Ask your next three arrivals how they got on finding you. Did the directions help? Where did they get confused? Those answers will tell you more than any amount of guessing. And ask them at the start of the day, while the journey is still fresh, because by the afternoon they will have forgiven you and forgotten all about it.

And the third. If there is anything specific about arriving, which gate, which door, where to park the campervan, who to ask for, put it on the directions page as well. That first moment, when somebody steps out of the car, should feel organised and welcoming, not uncertain.

And here is what I want to leave you with.

Your first hello stretches the whole way back down the road.

That feeling of, ah, these people have thought of everything, starts long before anybody walks through your door.

Get the getting there right, and your guest arrives ready.