Bord Failte's new corporate strategy is a little late - but then these things often are. On becoming director general last November, Mr John Dully discovered a consensus that Bord Failte had a future, but only so long as it was customer-driven and clearly focused on the international market-place. But who exactly are Bord Failte's customers? "We have only one: the trade," says Mr Dully. This will come as music to the ears of the trade which, not that long ago, believed Bord Failte considered them to be an inconvenient nuisance. Mr Dully misses no opportunity to speak now of the importance of the tourist board's partnership with the trade.

The corporate strategy recognises that Ireland's competitors for international tourists are getting sharper - often on the back of ideas pioneered by Bord Failte in overseas markets. It also faces up to the consequences of the EU tourism operational programme beginning to fall off at the end of 1999.

Finally, it will seek to satisfy the expectations of its shareholder and main banker, the Government.

The partnership with the industry will go beyond trade shows and marketing. Mr Dully is looking to work closely with the trade in defining a shared set of environmental principles to ensure sensitivity in tourism development.

As for his own people, Mr Dully wants them to get around more, meeting tour operators and travel agents in overseas markets. Meeting travel agents is not always the most uplifting of experiences, but it is an essential part of the job of any tourist board. Mr Dully says he found in some markets, extra advertising was sometimes seen as a substitute for getting out and meeting the local travel trade. "It's not good enough to meet by fax and phone."

It is looking as though Mr Dully's year will be a good one. But first the problem areas. He says there is a certain dissonance in the German market between the perception of Ireland as green and unspoiled and what Germans read in their newspapers about the booming economy. Does Ireland now look much like the Ruhr Valley, Germans are wondering.

We still have the product Germans want, according to Mr Dully, but we need to communicate that to them more effectively. Bord Failte has joined up with Kerrygold, an Irish product the Germans respect for its purity, in a joint promotion. Mr Dully says Ireland has only 0.5 of the German tourist market - "it must be possible to do better than that".

The French market began to "stutter and cough" in recent years, Mr Dully admits. There is the same sort of dissonance as in Germany, a sense that the fastest growing economy in the EU must have lost must of its laid-back charm. Fewer and fewer Germans and French are bringing their cars, a matter which Mr Dully plans to raise shortly with the ferry companies.

Overall, he says, Europe will grow by 5 per cent this year.

The target out of North America is 6 per cent: "I'll be surprised if we don't do 8." The airlines are finding that the strong US economy is good for them and they do not simply have to steal one another's customers. Aer Lingus, which used to compete with second-line carriers like Transamerica, now faces two formidable US airlines, Delta and Continental, out of New York.

Mr Dully is enthusiastic about the new Aer Lingus service between Los Angeles and Shannon/Dublin, inaugurated last week and Bord Failte may open an office there.

He is reticent about a problem in the US as it is the subject of High Court proceedings. North American tour operators are attempting to block the sale by Bord Failte and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board of their reservation system, Gulliver, to the Killorglin-based Fexco. The tour operators claim this would give Fexco a virtual monopoly in the US market and they want the deal unravelled. The case is due in the High Court at the end of July.

Irrespective of how the courts rule, have the US tour operators been poisoned against Bord Failte? "I don't believe so. The US tour operators turned up for our recent workshop in the RDS and participated very fully."