composed of families, work colleagues, couples, friends etc. We also have a good corporate clientele, politicians and embassies, which is a sign of excellent reputation amongst the high-end categories. The nightclub part might have frightened these customers and alienate The Irish pub concept, this is why we decided to cancel it. We are now becoming steady and we can feel the growth every week.
With your knowledge of the music industry, how do feel the country is progressing and what would your business ideas be to improve this?
The music industry is doing good in the sense that promoters are working really hard to introduce new concepts and music on the island, and bad because they often lose huge amounts of money in the process. I have always been really careful about the relation between the education (by introducing new concepts, artists and music genres to the population) and the viability of doing it. This is the reason why you will never see me sticking to one genre, it doesn't make any business sense here in Mauritius. We can't afford to have only one target market.
Yes, it's just so small that you have to appeal to everyone - to get the good audiences and brand awareness.
It's better to have an "entertainment" venue for all, even if you have to separate the targets: one day Electro, another day RnB, another day Deep House.
At the moment we are thinking about the best concepts we can implement at The Irish to get more customers from different target markets. For example every Friday we are attracting an average of 700 people with the live concept. The same concept attracts only 300-400 clients on Saturdays, so we need to find something more appealing and different.
Yes, think about the circumstances, understanding what people want on various days and their lifestyles & needs.
Exactly. We are still on a learning curve, every day we are analysing the trends and I’m confident we’ll get a clear understanding of what is missing.
What can customers currently expect from the entertainment at The Irish?
At the moment it's quite basic: Live bands 3 times a week, DJ sets for the weekend until 2am and sometimes other types of shows, such as magic shows or bar flairing.
This entertainment program already speaks to a great amount of customers, and, in a few weeks we'll be able to reveal an innovative program to become more specific to our clients needs.
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