Paddywagon fleet has a lot more 'ceol agus craic' in store

Cathal O'Connell, backpacker-turned-budget-tour-operator, was in Killarney the June night five years ago when one of his drivers rang from Belfast to say the bus was on fire.

Three young boys had lined the road with petrol, then issued a bomb threat, stood back and lit the match. In the end, two of the parked mini-coaches O'Connell used to bring mostly Australian backpackers around the Irish tourist trail - bright green, Republic-registered "Paddywagons" - were torched.

The loss, as an act of terrorism, was not covered by insurance. On a fully booked tour due to kick off from Belfast days later, only three people showed up.

"That almost broke me," says O'Connell, who had founded Paddywagon Ltd in 1998 with just one van and an idea about how to milk the ever-growing hoopla surrounding St Patrick's Day.

Things are very different now. The 15-strong Paddywagon fleet carries 20,000 independent travellers a year, while the company owns five hostels, including the flagship 200-bed Kinlay House in Cork, recently acquired for €3 million.

Two of his hostels are in the North, its tourism potential and coastal scenery still vastly underrated according to O'Connell, and the beds are full most of the time. A handful of Paddywagons are, nevertheless, painted orange.

O'Connell himself is tanned and relaxed. Although he says his travelling days are over now he is married, marketing trips in the winter just passed have taken him to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hawaii and the UK.

"I went to boarding school at the age of 11, so I was never a home bird," says O'Connell, whose family owns the O'Connell pharmacy chain. After college, he didn't want to settle down and, having "a bit of a sugar daddy", packed his bags.

On a three-week safari trip around Mozambique in the mid-1990s, each backpacker took their turn to cook. Thanks to a three-month Alix Gardner cookery course, he impressed the tour operators, who were looking for a regular chef.

"They taught me how to drive a truck on the beach. This was back around the time that Mandela was freed. There were very few tourists there," he says. "But I started wondering if anyone was driving around Ireland."

Not really was the answer. Within six months of his initial St Patrick's Day success, he had five vans on the road and was filling them with "28 and 29-year-olds, not 22-year-olds who are going to go on the piss, and not people who are 35 and too old, like me". The Paddywagon tours gladly embrace all the "ceol agus craic" clichés that make many Irish people cringe but are lapped up by tourists.

About 50 per cent of his clients are Australians staying in London on working holiday visas who come over here for a few days. "They want good stories and singalongs. They don't want [adopts flat mumble] 'here is the cross of St Ciarán'."

However, the company's brash image hasn't gone down too well with residents of Annascaul on the Dingle peninsula in Co Kerry, where it has opened a pub and hostel.

"We've given it a kind of abrasive name, the Randy Leprechaun, and there are murals outside. It's very noticeable - you can nearly see it from outer space," O'Connell says.

Some locals reportedly found the name offensive, saying it sounded like a sleaze joint and wasn't in keeping with the area's picturesque quality. O'Connell claims other locals have frequented the pub, attracted by the novelty of "all these Queensland surfers" drinking there. More pubs are planned.

Putting together a consortium to purchase Kinlay House in Dublin is next on his agenda. Paddywagon only has 60 beds in Dublin at its Paddy's Palace hostel on Gardiner Street and badly needs more.

"In the hotel market, there are too many rooms, not enough people. In the hostel market, there are not enough rooms and too many people," O'Connell says.

The 200-bed Dublin Kinlay House, which last year produced an operating profit of €485,000, is a listed building near Christchurch, valued at more than €7 million.

"We'd probably be one of the few outfits who could fill it," says O'Connell, who is disappointed that the company recently missed out on Kinlay House in Galway.

All three Kinlay hostels were put on the market by the student and youth travel agency Usit Ireland, whose parent Usit World collapsed in 2001.

That Paddywagon has bought one of the company's prize hostels and is knocking on the door of another strikes O'Connell as ironic, given his repeated attempts in the early days to get Usit to sell his minibus tours through their worldwide network of agents.

"We had been fighting tooth and nail to get into Usit, but obviously they were not going to take on any Joe Bloggs - a man with a van - with no track record," he explains.

Paddywagon was just about to sign a deal with Usit when the group collapsed with huge debts in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks.

So O'Connell admits he has been rubbing his hands with glee now they have signed a deal with STA, the new leader in student travel.

O'Connell is the sole owner of Paddywagon, save for a 50 per cent shareholding in its Derry hostel, which is held by the company's marketing manager. He employs 20 drivers, 20 hostel staff and about 10 office and management staff.

A €250-per-person tour costs €100 to provide, "so there's good profitability in it". Profits are reinvested in the business, which has increased in size at a rate of 50 per cent a year. Its only direct competitor here is the Scottish-based Shamrocker tours. After one false start, Paddywagon plans to sell 21-day "Eurowagon" trips next year, again courting Australian backpackers.

Meanwhile, no finer figure than the controversial former chat show host Jerry Springer has given his seal of approval to the Paddywagon concept, hiring two of their lurid, leprechaun-adorned coaches for a forthcoming visit.

"People don't want a plain white van," says O'Connell. "They want the look, the razzmatazz."