A strategy for growth

The economic contribution of visitors from outside of Northern Ireland to the region is almost three times greater than the value of the domestic market, John McGrillen explains, as he outlines plans to grow the tourism sector with a fresh focus on attracting people to Northern Ireland.

The Tourism NI CEO is boosted in his mission to raise the economic value of out of state visitors to Northern Ireland from £614 million to £1 billion by 2025 by encouraging figures for the sector in 2016. These largely outlined increases from every market including 36 per cent from the Republic of Ireland, 7 per cent from Great Britain, 15 per cent from Europe and 9 per cent from the USA.

The overall figures for the Republic of Ireland mask a relatively poor performance for the first half of the year before a focused campaign by Tourism NI and changes in the exchange rate following the Brexit referendum led to large uplifts in visitor numbers and expenditure in the second half of 2016.

McGrillen is confident that the results of the second half of the year can be carried in to 2017 and built upon over future years. However, the strategy developed to aid this growth is still awaiting political sign-off following the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive. He says: “The logical process was to agree a Programme for Government, then the Industrial Strategy and then a Tourism Growth Strategy. Increasing the economic input of the tourism sector is an integral part of the previous two, and while the industrial strategy managed to squeeze out the door before the Assembly collapse, that didn’t happen with the tourism strategy.”

The hope is that the strategy will be signed off when an Executive reforms. Explaining its ethos McGrillen outlines: “Essentially the strategy is set in the context of aiming to be more competitive internationally. We recognise the importance of the domestic market, particularly outside of the major tourist destinations such as Belfast or the Causeway Coast and during the offseason, however there is limited