REGIONAL FOCUS: FINGAL COUNTY COUNCIL
Tourism in Fingal
2022 marks the final years of Fingal’s 2017–2022 tourism strategy. The sector plays an important role in the local economy, generating €500 million in annual spend and sustaining 20,000 jobs across all sectors, a quarter of total jobs in the county.
The Skerries to Balbriggan Road, a proposed route for the Fingal Coastal Way
Skerries Harbour
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Tourism in Fingal is said to be heavily dependent upon both day-trip visitors, taking in the county’s coastal locations and heritage sites of interest, and stay-over visitors who are mainly concentrated on Dublin Airport and the surrounding area. An estimated 8,000 businesses provide accommodation and catering services in Fingal, with guest accommodation supporting an estimated 3,000 full time job equivalents and catering providing another 2,000. In 2017, Fingal County Council published its Fingal Tourism Statement 2017–2022, a strategy laying out a total of 152 actions in order to make Fingal an “attractive, vibrant and sustainable tourism destination delivering a distinctive experience for local residents, domestic and international visitors”. The 152 actions fall under three main
headings: optimise and expand visitor experiences; adopt a new place marketing strategy align with, and leveraging, the Grow Dublin Tourism Alliance; and develop new ways of working in partnership with stakeholders. Actions taken before the publication of the strategy in 2017 included a strategic review of heritage properties in 2016, with work then following on the streamlining of internal management arrangements in these properties, the improvement of transitional business performance, the construction of a strategic investment strategy, the appointment of a Heritage Task Force and the creation of a single management entity for the eight heritage properties based on an open charitable trust model.
