I remember finding the displays of Guinness adverts particularly interesting – the brand has a long-standing reputation for memorable, often quirky, commercials. Overall, it was a modest yet worthwhile tourist attraction.
This summer I went back to St James’s Gate to find the visitor experience transformed. The centre has been relocated to the enormous former storehouse, where yeast was added to the brew, and the displays have been greatly expanded to fill seven floors.
It’s Ireland’s most popular tourist site, attracting 1.7 million visitors a year before Covid struck, and more than 20 million since it opened in 2000. High-tech displays bombard the visitor with information about yeast, malted barley and the like.
But for me it was a case of more is less – or, referencing one of those famous ad campaigns, should that be Guinless? At the end of the day, how fascinating is a process that involves just four ingredients (barley, hops, yeast and water)?
Sure, the history of the business is moderately interesting, dating back as it does to 1759 when Arthur Guinness, the founder, signed a 9,000-year lease on the St James’s Gate site at £45 a year.
But I can’t help thinking the detail would be of more interest to historians, business studies undergrads or branding geeks than your average tourist. The displays, and indeed the whole affair, is wildly overblown and too-clever-by-half. A copy of that historic lease, for example, is displayed under a sheet of glass set into the floor, making it difficult to read.
