FEATURE
Tourism in Northern Ireland had surpassed the £1billion mark before the pandemic hit. Now, like the rest of the world, the industry is on a road to recover what was lost during the pandemic. Emma Deighan talks with Tourism NI Chief Executive John McGrillen about the task ahead.
J
ohn McGrillen says tourism here broke the £1billion glass ceiling in 2019. “It was the first time in our history that tourism spend reached such a level and everything was looking positive,” he begins. “Then, in early March 2020 everything was turned on its head.” It’s been estimated that the tourism industry across the whole of the UK at the height of the pandemic saw a reduction of 98% in air passengers. Restrictions within the hospitality sector, domestically, compounded that pressure. “We were pretty much shut down until the end of June 2021 when at least things opened domestically,” John continues. “Since then there have been many twists and turns and the pace has been frenetic. “The tourism industry had fundamentally shut down and we knew the impact was going to be greater than on any other sector. We also knew we would be the last to come out of this and the sector needed its own dedicated support programme.”
Crisis meetings led to the setting up of a Tourism Recovery Steering Group which oversaw the development of a crossdepartmental Tourism Recovery Action Plan. Actions within the plan – alongside the business support grants and rates relief provided by Stormont, and the VAT reduction and scheme funded by Westminster – offered the industry some protection, but recovery is going to be a long and winding road. In the absence of visitors from overseas it was the responsibility of Tourism NI to do what it could to generate sufficient business from the island of Ireland to keep tourism businesses afloat. John says, “Much of our focus last year was on demand generation. The additional resources made available to us by the Executive to deliver the recovery plan allowed us to run a number of very successful marketing campaigns and support businesses to do their own marketing and sales to capitalise on that work.”
Over the autumn Tourism Ireland ran a similar campaign in the GB market aimed at consumers in regions with direct air and sea links to Northern Ireland. This has helped grow visitor numbers in what might be seen as a silver lining following the cloud which has hung over the sector for almost two years now. John says those efforts will leave a lasting legacy. “There is absolutely no doubt that we saw a rise in visitors from those markets. We track visitor spend, and with access to credit card data, we knew how people were using cards and where they were coming from. “There was an increase of over 150% in spend from the ROI market. We ran a huge campaign in the summer of 2020 which saw twice as many people visit, and then in 2021 visitor numbers rose again by a further 50% on the 2019 figures. Over the summer one in every four short breaks taken by ROI visitors were to Northern Ireland. “Positive word of mouth also boosted those visitor figures and I do believe there
Shoots of 62
