Tuesday 21st February 2006

FUNDING FOR ‘SUPER REGIONS’ VITAL FOR REGIONAL TOURISM SURVIVAL

States Tourism Chief

The Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) has welcomed the announcement of an additional €5million fund for marketing initiatives to promote tourism in the regions, stating it comes at a crucial juncture for the sector. Citing the worrying decline in regional spread of tourism, which has seen bednights by overseas visitors outside Dublin fall by 9.2 million since 1999, IHF President Richard Bourke says the funding is vital to revive overseas tourism in regional areas and to reverse this decline. The Federation believes the establishment of three new 'super regions' for the purposes of overseas promotion is a strategic step in re-invigorating the regions and stated that the strength of communicating compelling reasons to visit the regions by overseas leisure tourists will be the benchmark by which the success of this initiative will be measured.

Richard Bourke attributed the decline in regional tourism to our inability in recent years to communicate in our key overseas markets, particularly Great Britain, compelling reasons to visit Ireland outside of Dublin. But, he said, our regions have a lot to offer visitors and this fund should be used to effectively communicate the attractions of our regions and inject a much needed lease of life into regional tourism performance.

“It’s a fact that our regions outside of Dublin haven’t been performing in recent years and this is of great concern to our industry, particularly in an environment where international competition is so high and given the Government’s ambitions to increase visitor numbers to 10 million by 2012. The number of visitors to Ireland should not be the key measurement of the success of our tourism marketing, rather it should be the number of nights spent by overseas leisure tourists in the country. In this respect our regions have suffered. It is extremely heartening that the Government is allocating much needed funds to the State tourism bodies to focus on this major challenge,” he said.

Citing the west of Ireland as an example, Mr Bourke stated that three million bednights have been lost to the Western seaboard area over the past five years. In addition demand for activity based holidays such as angling, walking, golf, cycling and equestrian is also in decline. This, he says, makes it all the more critical that Ireland’s regions are positioned clearly with a ‘reason to visit’ proposition.

“It’s not enough anymore to rely on our beautiful landscape and friendly people as the reason for visitors to come here. While those qualities will always be an integral part of our offering, we are now competing with a range of European destinations and must up the ante by offering a compelling reason for people to choose Ireland over and above other countries. Finding new and innovative ways to package our holiday offerings and offer an experience to overseas visitors is something that has worked well in other countries. Ireland needs to find that special way of marketing itself in order to bring overseas visitors back into our countryside. This fund and the supporting programme to encourage local tourism interests in the regions to continue to work together will be of paramount importance to achieving that objective,” Richard Bourke concludes.

ENDS

For information:
Niamh Boylan / Siobhan Molloy          Tel: 01 6760168
Weber Shandwick FCC                      Mobiles: 086 3809191 / 086 8175066