G&W Irish Tours; Fun-filled adventures & shared experiences

Find friendship and community through travel. I have Paul Ward and Ian Gould here, who are founders of G&W Travel, as you can see clearly on their shirts right there. Very good marketers. They're here with more about how they got started and how you can sign up for your next adventure. Thank you so much for coming in. It's very, very nice to be here. We've already been chatting a little bit behind the scenes. You guys have a very deep, deep connection to Wisconsin. Tell me about that first. Yeah, we do. I came over here in 2001. I married a lovely Wisconsin lady, been here, raised my kids here. Now the kids are older, I have a chance to travel more. So we thought this was just the perfect time to bring these ideas to the front and start working on that. And you guys have been a big part of the Milwaukee hospitality community, too. Tell us about that. I came over in 1994. Okay. When you say it like that, it seems like a really long time ago. Yeah, yeah. I went up in Green Bay, came to Milwaukee, and I started at, went to Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. And then while I was there, I started an Irish pub called County Clare. That's the county I'm from in Ireland, and it seemed rather fitting. But yeah, for the past 20-odd years, I've been in the hospitality, running pubs and restaurants around the city as well. So that's how he and I met. Oh, that's the connection right there. And so, of course, now you're taking that and you've started this G&W Irish Tours. Ireland, I've never been. I'm told it's beautiful. I have my little DNA test says I have 4% Irish DNA. So I think I'm obligated to go back at some point. I don't think it needs much of a pitch, but I'm sure if the folks are like me, they need, you know, a reason, an excuse. So what's what's my excuse? Why should I go to Ireland? Well, these tours started as a couple of friends speaking. We had people coming to us and saying, when you go home, can we come with you? All that sort of thing. So it grew from we speaking with friends to taking a group of friends across. They tell their friends and we this is developed into the G&W community. Okay, we really grew organically Absolutely. This wasn't like a big business plan that you were like, you know going up from actually quite the opposite I think it was just it kind of we fell into a little bit You know Ian was doing him a little bit before me and he says geez you should get into these these are mad and you know They just seem to connect. We're both really good with people and people he has a following I to follow and we said Let's merge the two and let's take people back to our home because we'd been living here in our adopted home for 30 odd years and right for years people go back to Ireland like Paul where do we go what do we see who do we go to they would come to the pub and ask these questions so now we get to do it why don't you come with us right we're heading home you still had all those connections even though you'd been here for so long yeah we still owe a lot of people money over there so they have our addresses to go back and check yeah yeah yeah are we good yeah you know yourself rich rich yeah absolutely and so what would make your tour stand out from the others other than the obvious connections well we're it's personable you know and like what you asked earlier like why do it why not you know and it's like we're two of your friends like ian likes to say you're two goofy cousins you know like we're taking we're going back to ireland would you like to come with us right and so we'll take you off the beaten track we go to the places that we grew up going to right uh one that always stands out for me is the Laytown Races, the horse race in Ireland that no one thinks to go to And it's basically when the tide goes out they set up this horse track, and there's a horse race, and we're doing a bunch of betting and stuff And all the locals, we took 40-odd Americans there All the locals are scratching their heads going how did you know about this? And we're like, well, we're with these two lads from G&W And so, yeah, there's the Blarney. This is the inside track, pardon the pun there, that you guys have that other folks wouldn't necessarily have. You know, and I always like to say, You don't want to follow the tourist crowds anyway. If you want the good food, you look for the locals. Look for the folks that don't look like you and you go eat with them. So I imagine, especially with your background in food and everything like that, you must know the best places to eat real Irish food. Yeah, and just to bounce off what you said, obviously we still do a lot of the touristic things that are worth doing. We do chop away some stuff that's not so interesting as it might have been. but yeah we get and we're always looking for input so we converse with people we were up in Carlingford in County Louth and they're famed for their oysters so we were able to hook up with Kian who owns the Carlingford Oyster Company go and do a tasting and eat and little sips of beer I bet a lot of folks wouldn't necessarily put Ireland and oysters together there's a big Guinness Oyster Festival every year it's huge Guinness Oyster Festival that takes place and stuff as I sit here I love it And you've got a really cool lineup. You start with the Christmas stuff, though. Tell me about that. That's coming up in a month. We've got like close to 40 people coming with us, including my two lovely daughters that are coming with me on this one. So I'm really excited. It's more personal. But yeah, we're doing Switzerland, Germany, France, and Luxembourg. We'll see all the Christmas markets and see how that differs from country to country. Right, it makes sense. And then what's coming up in 2027? We have Spain in April. We have Northwest Ireland in June, just right as summer break hits and then we have two Badgers tours so we have a pre-game and a post-game tour for the Wisconsin Badgers they're actually playing in Dublin oh that's right okay and so we'll take you on a lovely trip to the southwest of Ireland and then it'll culminate with the game or we'll start with the game depending which one you want to do that'd be fun yeah and then we have an Italian tour that's in October right when it's not as hot and you're probably wondering well it says GNW Irish tours why on earth do they do any of these other tours because it grew into something bigger like all of these people that were coming with us were like well we've done ireland with you can we go somewhere else so we basically ran out of ireland like how you plan a trip even if it's not necessarily in ireland so i get that it's that whole idea of community yeah we're all traveling together it's the experience that we have together you kind of join a bigger family in a way and everybody's included now uh in my family we like to save a couple bucks so what kind of discounts can i get well we have an early sign up discount so per person you know there's $200 off if you sign up for our April tour if you sign up before November 1st $200 that's $400 a couple that's a lot of drinking that's at least one day's worth of drinking for some of the people out there you know what I mean some of them some of them you know and we've we've known a few of them and I can tell you right now they know who they are sure yep no shortage on either side of the pond there this all sounds amazing what's the best place to go to find more information uh go to our website uh which is gwirishtours.com without without the without the end just gwirishtours and or check out our facebook page as well and join our group so a great way to passively follow along and see what we're up to i do a lot of videos and reels our trip coming up you can actually follow along see what we're doing there you go so check them out on the social media and check out their website if you want to get involved sounds like a lot of fun thank you both so much for coming in thanks a million got more walking coming up in just a couple of minutes.