The Guinness Storehouse Is Offering An Extravagant Buyout Deal For Stout Superfans
Ireland’s biggest brewery was recently tapped as the “World’s Leading Tourist Attraction 2023.”
In 2020, just weeks before Ireland’s first pandemic lockdown, the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin unveiled a major extension to its insane Gravity Bar with an official opening ceremony during a week in which the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, aka William and Kate, visited. The new Gravity Bar, an architectural marvel perched atop part of the historic Guinness brewery like a stylish UFO, instantly became a mecca for fans of the iconic beer brand.
Now the Guinness Storehouse has has just been named World’s Leading Tourist Attraction 2023 at the prestigious World Travel Awards—beating out iconic locations like the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace, The Great Wall of China and Machu Picchu.
And while the likes of Bill Clinton, Tom Cruise, Will Ferrell, Pink and Kylie Minogue have all visited the attraction, you can now outdo them all by booking the entire venue for a private event including dinner for up to 2,000 guests prepared by Guinness’s acclaimed Executive Chef Seán Hunter, according to the brand’s latest event-offering brochure.
Expect to pay six figures for the baller move of booking out the world’s top tourist attraction, which is thronged by thousands of Guinness enthusiasts every day. That gets you exclusive access to all seven floors of the ultimate beer lovers’ destination, culminating in the Gravity Bar, which towers 150 feet above the Dublin, offering the most spectacular 360-degree views in the city—along with unlimited pints of the “black stuff”.
“Events are built bespoke for clients depending on their needs,” the brand, which is owned by spirits giant Diageo, advises. “We can do everything from canapés and drinks receptions to full seated dinners or entire building takeovers.” The offering marks a new chapter for the historic brand whose history dates back 265 years, and presents a unique opportunity to make the history books for the first person to pull the trigger on a full buyout including the new Gravity Bar.
Want to go really big? It’ll require some advance planning, but you can opt to do your VIP buyout during the annual College Football Classic, wherein two top American college football teams battle it out at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium. This year’s epic battle saw Notre Dame and Navy fight it out, with the Navy team deploying a battleship full of sailors to fill their end zone, along with several high-ranking admirals and Joe Montana, a longtime Guinness brand ambassador. Guinness has a multi-year partnership with with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Alumni.
“Football has been a priority for us in the United States over the last several years,” as Mark Phillips, Guinness brand director, told Forbes. “We recognized that the fans who watch a game are the same ones that would appreciate a well-crafted beer. We wanted to link our brand with these two programs because they share many of the same values we do as a brewery community, connection, and charity,” as the brand donates millions to good causes.
“It is our belief that crafting the perfect event requires the perfect setting,” as Guinness’ event prospectus puts it. “A place of wonder. A home filled with history. A venue that also has an appreciation for crafting the unique. We at Guinness Storehouse believe that your event should have you at the heart of it. Crafted your way. An event like no other. Individual, extraordinary and unparalleled. A social occasion so unimaginable and unequalled that it will leave an unforgettable first, second and third impression. An event made for you, by us, at the Home of Guinness.”
As Yahoo Entertainment reports, Tom Cruise visited the Storehouse in 2013, followed soon after by Usher, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Conan O’Brien, and Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa, who called the brewery “home sweet home” in an Instagram post. All apparently enjoyed their pints to the fullest—save for the royals, who abstained—and learned to pour the perfect pint in the time-honored Guinness tradition, a process which takes several minutes.
In addition to the baller buyout option, Guinness also recently inaugurated a brand new Guinness Brewery Experience tour. For the first time ever, visitors booking the unique experience will get to go into historic underground tunnels linking the original home and office of founder Arthur Guinness with the iconic brewery, contrasted with a behind-the-scenes look at the high-tech operation at the brand’s Brewhouse 4 next door.
The Guinness Storehouse experience includes interactive journeys through the brewing process, the brand’s iconic advertising from decades past, and of course the chance to pull your own pint—some 900,000 were served in 2022 alone—learning from the brand’s own experts. You can also be among the first to sample the brand’s newest products, such as Guinness Nitro Surge, Guinness Microdraught and Guinness 0.0.
The Gravity Bar, designed to look like the head on a pint glass, is an architectural marvel. From its floor to ceiling glass windows you can see across the city to the Dublin Mountains as far as Howth Head. The expansion project took a year and a half and cost around $20 million, making it the most expensive beer bar in the world. Capable of accommodating 500 guests at a time, the Gravity Bar is as tall as 300 pints of Guinness, and it would take 2.6 millions pint of Guinness to fill it.
Inside, the Gravity Bar, designed by O’Donnell O’Neill Design , features murals by Irish street artist Aches, along with copper and turquoise furniture tones made to “play off the industrial feel of bare concrete and exposed ceiling beams” in homage to the architecture of the 120-year-old Storehouse itself, one of the first steel-framed structures of its kind in Ireland.
The Storehouse is located in the historic St. James’s Gate Brewery complex, an area that Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on in 1759. The lease “showed Guinness’s faith in his creation and the confidence he had in its enduring appeal,” the brand notes. The Gravity Bar meanwhile was designed by UK-based design firm Imagination in collaboration with Irish architects RKD.
Also adjacent to the Guinness Storehouse, which was originally built between 1902 and 1904 and cost over €42 million to transform into a visitors’ experience, is the Guinness Open Gate Brewery, an experimental taproom and brewery where “brewers are given the creative license to dream in beer;” and Roe&Co Distillery, another Diageo venture described as “the home of cocktail exploration and modern Irish whiskey” and designed to complement Guinness’ offerings.
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