Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Tourism in Northern Ireland, HC 2014
Wednesday 19 June 2019
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 19 June 2019
Members present: Simon Hoare (Chair); Mr Gregory Campbell; Maria Caulfield; Mr Stephen Hepburn; Lady Hermon; Kate Hoey; Conor McGinn; Nigel Mills; Ian Paisley; Jim Shannon; Bob Stewart; Sir Desmond Swayne.
Questions 194 - 293
Witnesses
I: Niall Gibbons, Chief Executive, Tourism Ireland; John McGrillen, Chief Executive, Tourism NI.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Niall Gibbons and John McGrillen.
Q194 Chair: Gentlemen, good morning and welcome to this meeting, where we are taking oral evidence, as you know, on tourism in Northern Ireland. I am Simon Hoare; I am the new Chairman of the Select Committee. I ask you, as I would ask colleagues, to be incredibly sensitive and gentle with me. I want a nice, easy ride in, with no peculiar things going on. Thank you very much indeed for coming to see us. We look forward with great interest to what you have to say. I might just ask both of you, please, to introduce yourselves for the record, then make any introductory remarks you wish to. Then, through me, colleagues will interrogate your evidence, make suggestions and all the rest of it. Thank you.
John McGrillen: Thank you very much for the invite here today. My name is John McGrillen and I am chief executive of Tourism Northern Ireland. We are the tourism development authority, and we are responsible for the development of the tourism industry and product in Northern Ireland. We are responsible for the marketing and promotion of Northern Ireland on the island of Ireland. We are also responsible for the promotion of Northern Ireland as a business tourism destination, and take the lead in selling Northern Ireland to the golf industry as a golf destination, across the globe. Niall’s team looks after the consumer piece; we interact with the industry.
In industry development, we support around 3,000 small and micro-enterprises in Northern Ireland, which are involved in the tourism industry itself. We do that through the pretty detailed industry development programme that we have and we support businesses, through either direct mentoring or helping them to work together in clusters. We support them through conferences and seminars, and we have a pretty substantive online support platform, tourismni.com, through which we support those businesses. We run a number of major events to support the industry, such as Meet the Buyer, which is in partnership with Tourism Ireland, to bring the industry in Northern Ireland into contact with the trade globally. We support over 70 events of different sizes and scales, across the whole of Northern Ireland, in any one year including this year, when we are involved with the R&A in the organisation of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush.
From a product development point of view, over the last decade or so we have invested well over £100 million in new products. You will be familiar with some of that: Titanic Belfast, the visitor centre at the Giant’s Causeway, the new conference facilities, and Belfast waterfront, now known as ICC Belfast. We are currently working with a number of people who are interested in developing the screen product, which is based on “Game of Thrones” and related visitor attractions.
On the marketing front, again we work in partnership with Tourism Ireland. We bring over 500 journalists and people from the trade to familiarisation visits every year to make them aware of what Northern Ireland has to offer, as a tourism destination. We run our own campaigns, both domestically in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. Over the last two years, we have seen the number of visitors from the Republic of Ireland dramatically increase. Spend from the Republic of Ireland has gone up by 55% in those two years. Spend at home has gone up by 22%, up to £300 million, and we invest about £750,000 a year to help secure conference and incentive business for Northern Ireland.
Our objectives are set out in the programme for government, which has tasked us to work in partnership with others to deliver £1 billion of tourism spend by 2020. At the end of 2018, tourism spend had risen to £968 million, so we are 97% of the way to achieving the target that has been set for us and are reasonably confident that, with a good wind, we will achieve it, or hopefully be slightly ahead.
Niall Gibbons: Thank you very much, Chairman and members, for the opportunity to address you today. My name is Niall Gibbons; I am chief executive of Tourism Ireland. We are the organisation responsible for marketing the island of Ireland abroad as a leading holiday destination. Tourism Ireland was established as one of the six areas of co-operation, under the framework of the Belfast agreement of Good Friday 1998. The organisation operates under the auspices of the North/South Ministerial Council, through the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport in Ireland. Our objectives are to increase tourism to the island of Ireland and support Northern Ireland to realise its tourism potential. We operate in over 20 markets around the world, and roll out world-class global marketing campaigns for Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland. We work closely with Tourism Northern Ireland to ensure that our promotional themes abroad align with its development priorities for the industry at home. This is a very integrated and collaborative approach. In long-haul markets, Tourism Ireland also works with VisitBritain to promote the island of Ireland and Great Britain as destinations to be visited as part of a single holiday, from those long-haul markets.
The World Economic Forum ranks Ireland third in the globe out of 136 countries for effectiveness of marketing and branding to attract tourists. Tourism is a vital industry for Northern Ireland, a significant driver of economic growth and helps to support more than 65,000 jobs; that is one in every 13 in Northern Ireland. Since Tourism Ireland came into operation in 2002, almost 30 million overseas visitors have come to Northern Ireland and more than £6.6 billion has been generated for the Northern Ireland economy.
Growth in overseas tourism to Northern Ireland has outpaced the rate of growth to the UK as a whole, in visitors and revenue, over the past five years. During the same period, 2013 to 2018, Northern Ireland has grown almost twice as fast as the UK as a whole in visitors and revenue. Northern Ireland’s share of UK holidaymakers grew by 36% in those five years and, since 2010, the number of North American and European visitors to Northern Ireland has increased by 106% and 47% respectively. 2018 was another record year. The Northern Ireland Research and Statistics Agency confirms that we welcomed 2.22 million overseas visitors to Northern Ireland in 2018, delivering £561 million. Within those figures, overall holiday visitors grew by 12%; from Great Britain, by 10%; North America, 22%; mainland Europe, 5%; and long-haul markets, such as Australia and China, 14%.
Tourism Ireland is rolling out an extensive global marketing campaign at the moment to build on the success of 2018 and continue to grow overseas tourism to Northern Ireland in 2019. Our television campaigns alone, so far this year, have reached up to 72 million people in the United States, 34 million in Germany and France, and 12 million in Great Britain. Our Northern Ireland city breaks campaign this spring reached an estimated 73% of all adults in major British cities, with direct flights to Northern Ireland from London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. This resulted in double-digit increases to the Belfast and Derry/Londonderry pages on our websites, and key partners reported increased bookings from that promotion.
Our “Game of Thrones” campaign this spring reached 27 million fans around the world on Facebook and Instagram, and has already racked up 8.4 million video views. All highlight Northern Ireland as “Game of Thrones” territory. This builds on earlier campaigns that reached 120 million fans across the world, including our Door of Thrones and Game of Thrones Tapestry. The 148th Open Championship at Royal Portrush in July is another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and Tourism Ireland is building on its successful Home of Champions golf campaign, which capitalises on the success of Northern Ireland champions, such as Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke to promote Northern Ireland as a superb golf destination and a great place to hold world-class events, while also encouraging those attending the Open to extend their stay in Northern Ireland. This spring, our video campaign with Darren Clarke reached 4.2 million golf enthusiasts through the Sky Sports website in Britain, and we reached another 16 million golf enthusiasts through our campaign on the NBC Golf Channel in the United States.
The Great Britain market continues to be very important, delivering about 64% of all visitors to Northern Ireland. I am delighted to say that revenue from Great Britain holidaymakers to Northern Ireland has risen a massive 86% since 2012. Growth continued in 2018, when we welcomed 1.4 million visitors from Great Britain. Tourism Ireland has a significant digital footprint and a major presence on social media. Our international website attracts over 20 million unique visitors each year and delivers 5 million referrals to tourism industry partners, so they can close the sale. Tourism Ireland’s overseas publicity machine generates positive coverage, which John mentioned already. If we were to buy that, it would have cost us £115 million alone for Northern Ireland.
Every year, we invite all Northern Ireland’s airports, airlines and sea carriers to engage in activity with us to attract new routes and sustain existing ones through co-operative marketing. In 2018, we invested £560,000 in co-operative marketing with Northern Ireland partners. To date, that has included the likes of easyJet, Ryanair, British Airways, Aer Lingus, Flybe and Loganair to promote direct flights to Northern Ireland from a range of airports in Great Britain and other countries. Tourism Ireland also encourages overseas tour operators to include more Northern Ireland tourism inventory in their programmes, and we now have more than 800 tour operators abroad programming Northern Ireland that did not before.
Tourism Ireland markets Northern Ireland as a must-see destination to 20 countries across the world. We have made significant progress and, despite uncertainty on the horizon, we look to the future with confidence. This year, we are aiming to grow overseas tourism revenue to Northern Ireland by a further 8% in 2019. Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you, both. I have not watched the last season of “Game of Thrones”, so I do not want any spoilers. I want to watch it quietly by myself and find out what happens so, if anybody knows the final scenes, please do not tell me. I would be incredibly grateful. Ian, you indicated first.
Q195 Ian Paisley: Thank you, Chairman, and welcome officially to the chairmanship of the Committee. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Can I first pass on to you and your staff my congratulations and thank you for the hard work that is being done? We know it can be difficult at times to market a destination that has faced troubles in the past, but there is no doubt that that has sprung well, and that significant progress is being made. It would be churlish not to recognise the significant effort and work that your people have put into that. It is important to put that on the record. I have met many of your people over the years, including both of you gentlemen, and am always pleased by your enthusiasm, even if we have arguments about how things should be done. For me, it is important to put that on the record. Could I have a yes or no answer to start? Tourism in Northern Ireland has not yet reached saturation point; is that a fair comment?
John McGrillen: I think it is a fair comment, yes. There is still significant potential for growth.
Q196 Ian Paisley: There are a few out there who have said we can only grow so much, but there are plenty of other opportunities. I am glad you agree with that, John. The Open is a wonderful opportunity for Northern Ireland. Congratulations on achieving that. We look forward to what is going to happen in July, and with the Northern Ireland Open going forward, where men and women will play competitively together for the first time this year. That is a fantastic achievement for golf tourism as well.
Can I ask you this specifically? We have some concerns that the Open is a cliff edge and that, once it is over, there will be no real significant event going forward. John, you will know I have been campaigning with others to get other major events. The World Rally is one example. Give us an idea of where the next chapter is. What is the next big case? Is World Rally a potential for Northern Ireland? If so, what needs to be done next?
John McGrillen: It certainly is a potential, as are a number of other events we are talking to promoters about. It is important to understand the process and what we are seeking to do with events. They get a very high profile and are in people’s minds. The purpose of supporting events is to make sure, first, that we get significant economic benefit as and when the event takes place and, secondly, after that, that it helps us promote Northern Ireland in the international marketplace.
With golf, for example, we will see £18 million spent in and around the north coast while the event is taking place, but there is probably going to be more than £70 million of benefit in the years thereafter from attracting golfers to the north coast and beyond. We seek to deliver that economic benefit in the first instance. When we get a submission, we first ask the promoter to give us the evidence that allows us to make the case for investment in that particular event. The revenue support we get for golf or any of the larger projects does not come from within our budget; we have to make a submission to the Department, so we need to put a strong business case to the Department to make the argument that the event deserves support and there is going to be a significant return on investment in tourism terms. The Department, and it would normally be a Minister, would take the decision: “Where does this fit in my priorities for where I spend my money?” They also look after universities, six colleges and Invest NI.
Q197 Ian Paisley: Has a bid been made for another event, going forward?
John McGrillen: As I understand it, we are in the process of gathering that information from the people you have been speaking to.
Ian Paisley: World Rally.
John McGrillen: Yes. We are doing that at the moment. Once we have sufficient evidence to suggest that this project could really deliver for Northern Ireland, we will make the cast to the Department.
Q198 Ian Paisley: When is the crunch time for a decision? What is the timeline? When does a decision, yea or nay with heads of agreement, have to be made?
John McGrillen: I do not know the specific answer to that question, because I was not expecting to be asked about specific events, but I can certainly find it. I can give you a guarantee that we will work towards whatever that deal is and, if we are provided with the information that we need to make the case to the Department, we will do that.
Q199 Ian Paisley: That is very good. I appreciate that. Earlier, you said that Northern Ireland has not reached saturation point. That point is even borne out by your evidence. There are so many opportunities. With “Game of Thrones” in my own constituency alone, I know about the opportunities that exist in the Dark Hedges. We have had an alignment between Tourism Ireland and Tourism Northern Ireland, with Bord Fáilte also doing its own thing under a particular ambit, since 2002. Is there room to review and change that now, and say that Northern Ireland needs more headspace outside of the UK to market specific Northern Ireland issues? Have you down a SWOT analysis to say what the strengths and weaknesses would be of setting up your own organisation and going alone, as opposed to working always hand in hand with Tourism Ireland? Is there a new way of doing it? There are always ways of looking at things from a different perspective.
John McGrillen: We work in a framework that was decided by politicians. As public servants, it is not for us to question the decisions that politicians take.
Ian Paisley: You are very kind.
John McGrillen: That is the case. That is how democracy works, I suppose. From our perspective, we work within the framework that we have and we collectively recognise that there is potential for growth. We work in partnership with a raft of people in delivering these objectives. We work with Tourism Ireland and also with VisitBritain. We are happy to ride two horses when it suits us. We work closely with a range of councils and other people who have significant investment in the tourism product in Northern Ireland, such as Historic Royal Palaces. Over the last number of months, we have helped develop a draft strategy, which we have delivered to the Department, for how we think, working collectively, we can double the value of tourism to the Northern Ireland economy in the next decade.
Q200 Ian Paisley: Is that within the existing framework?
John McGrillen: That is within the existing framework.
Q201 Ian Paisley: It is not particularly challenging that. That is where I wanted to get. I am sure you have read the evidence that has been put to us, where there is the view that Tourism Ireland first and foremost has to promote the Republic of Ireland. After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Tourism Ireland does that first and foremost, and does it well, and Northern Ireland gets second place. Your figures today, Niall, are very impressive, but there is a concern that the Northern Ireland piece comes in at second place, from time to time. One of the biggest critics of that was Aldergrove Airport in the evidence we took from Uel Hoey. He made a case that his airport is not supported by your team in promoting it as a hub to come in and land. Is that a fair criticism of Tourism Ireland?
Niall Gibbons: It is not correct to say that we promote the Republic of Ireland first and foremost. That used to be the job of Bord Fáilte. Tourism Ireland was established to carry out the functions previously carried out separately by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and Bord Fáilte, but to do so in a collaborative manner. We make sure that we give a lot of prominence to Northern Ireland. Look at the advantages that Northern Ireland gets from working in a collaborative fashion. For example, Tourism Ireland has 22,000 international media on its database, to which Northern Ireland has access. We have 23 operations around the globe, where Northern Ireland is now in the shop window, which it would not have been before. In terms of digital footprint, our advertising had 1.5 billion touchpoints around the globe last year. Northern Ireland would not have had that on its own.
Q202 Ian Paisley: Can I bring you to the criticism that the airport made specifically?
Niall Gibbons: I am coming to look at the airports. We write to all airports, air carriers and sea carriers at the start of every year, setting out our strategic objectives. We have a joint marketing fund in place, to which people can apply. Last year, out of the £560,000 spend with carriers for Northern Ireland—we do not promote airports, by the way; we support carriers to promote the inbound leg of the route—83% was on Belfast International routes, but everyone is treated the same. There is very much a level playing field, so I do not accept the criticism at all.
We are there to generate people coming to the island and support Northern Ireland to realise its tourism potential. We are really keen to support routes into Northern Ireland. We gave additional funding to Northern Ireland for promotional opportunities particularly on the air access side, and we have a whole range of routes for which we have done joint marketing last year. In fact, we supported all the applications that carriers on Belfast International routes put in for funding.
Q203 Ian Paisley: Mr Hoey indicated to us that that is not the case and that his airport was not being properly supported or promoted, in the way he expected. He alleged that, because Dublin Airport is principally owned by the Irish state, it gives them an advantage over a privately owned airport. He also alluded to how Shannon and Cork probably felt in a similar position, in that everything is going through Dublin. You produced a report, Canada: land of opportunity, for 2014 to 2016, which made clear its objective to communicate how easy it is to access Northern Ireland from Dublin Airport. This is why they said everything goes through Dublin. It does not promote them or coming to Northern Ireland. There is no international carrier coming to Northern Ireland, and that has declined in the period that Tourism Ireland has had this remit. Is that right?
Niall Gibbons: Go back and look at the Canada market, which is really important for Northern Ireland, because there is a big diaspora in Canada. There used to be three carriers that served the Northern Ireland market from Canada. There was Zoom, Flyglobespan and Air Transat. They carried about 1,500 seats a week. Those three routes disappeared. We now have about 10,000 seats a week, which all route through Dublin bar one, which goes through Shannon. If Belfast International Airport wants to work with any carrier, along with us, to get a new route in, as we have done in the past—the CEO had been on to me many years ago in relation to this—we would be happy to support the marketing of that route.
Q204 Ian Paisley: Is it true that you do not use and have not visited Aldergrove?
Niall Gibbons: My performance is not judged on what airports I visit. There are 11 airports on the island of Ireland. I have a team that is involved in joint marketing activities, which engages all the teams in the airports around the country.
Q205 Ian Paisley: You use and visit Dublin Airport, I assume.
Niall Gibbons: That is where I live.
Q206 Ian Paisley: What about Shannon or Cork?
Niall Gibbons: I have used all the airports on the island of Ireland at some point in my time at Tourism Ireland, but I live in Dublin, so it makes sense for me to travel from there. The chief executive of Belfast International is on our board. Our teams have interacted with them, most recently at some European routes conferences. If they have any issues, they know exactly where I am and can pick up a phone.
Q207 Ian Paisley: You can understand why someone reading that would say that communicating how easy it is to access Northern Ireland from Dublin Airport is like someone in Edinburgh reading how easy it is to access Edinburgh from Heathrow or Dublin from Heathrow. You can see how people would go, “Hang on, we are a business. We are trying to get people in here. We are trying to get an international carrier. We need Tourism Ireland to go out and help us market what we can produce, and we are not getting that support”. Yet they allege that Dublin Airport is getting a lot of support and promotion from your agency.
Niall Gibbons: We have a lot of good data on the profile of people who come. We know what their motivations are. Our job is to motivate consumers to come to the island of Ireland, rather than go somewhere else. That is lots of choice around the globe so, if people are going to come to Northern Ireland, we advise them of the easiest route there. That is why the only air access at the moment is through Dublin and one into Shannon.
Q208 Ian Paisley: How closely do you work with Bord Fáilte—or Fáilte Ireland? This is my last question.
Niall Gibbons: We have a tripartite operation. We meet about four times a year with the two tourist boards.
Q209 Ian Paisley: Their job is to promote the Republic of Ireland in the Republic of Ireland. Is that not right?
Niall Gibbons: That is correct, and they also have business tourism responsibilities internationally.
Q210 Ian Paisley: Do they promote anything in Northern Ireland?
Niall Gibbons: Fáilte Ireland’s responsibility is to promote Northern Ireland, yes.
Ian Paisley: Is that Bord Fáilte?
Niall Gibbons: Fáilte Ireland, the replacement, yes.
Q211 Ian Paisley: Tell me this. The map Bord Fáilte has produced of Ireland is the oddest map I have ever seen. It is a horizontal map.
Niall Gibbons: That is not their map. That map is from a campaign 10 years ago, Go Where Ireland Takes You.
Q212 Ian Paisley: It advertises them, and has your logo and their logo on it. Northern Ireland falls off the top of the horizon. Of the two sites identified, one is the walls of the historic city of Derry and the other is a banner for the Giant’s Causeway, which cannot be seen. It does not really do it for Northern Ireland, does it?
Niall Gibbons: That is not our advertisement.
Ian Paisley: But you work closely with them.
Niall Gibbons: I am not quite sure what the question is.
Q213 Ian Paisley: Are you saying to them, “That does not give Northern Ireland a fair crack of the whip”? When people come to Dublin, if that is the gateway, we need them to get up to Ulster to see all the stuff that is going on up there. We need to push this more and that does not do it.
Niall Gibbons: To explain to the Chairman, our job is to market the island of Ireland and Northern Ireland in Great Britain and international markets. We do not have any responsibility in Northern Ireland itself, so to speak. That is a separate organisation, which is a statutory body.
Ian Paisley: When they arrive in the south of Ireland, in Dublin, they see this.
Niall Gibbons: That is not an advertisement in Dublin. We are getting confused here. Our job in Tourism Ireland is to market the island of Ireland to Great Britain and internationally. Fáilte Ireland is John McGrillen’s equivalent in the Republic of Ireland, which is funded by the Irish Government to carry out its statutory remit, which is separate from our organisation.
Q214 Ian Paisley: Did you tell them to stop using that?
Niall Gibbons: I have not even seen them use it.
Ian Paisley: You have never seen them use it.
Niall Gibbons: No.
Q215 Ian Paisley: But you are familiar with it. You have seen it before.
Niall Gibbons: Funnily enough, that is an advertisement we used 10 years ago. I have not seen Fáilte Ireland use it.
Q216 Ian Paisley: So this is your advertisement.
Niall Gibbons: It is, from 10 years ago, but we do not use it in Northern Ireland.
Q217 Ian Paisley: I am glad you do not use it in Northern Ireland. Where did you use it? Who saw this?
Niall Gibbons: You are going back over 10 years.
Q218 Ian Paisley: Was this used all over the world?
Niall Gibbons: The Go Where Ireland Takes You map was part of a campaign that we ran over 10 years ago.
Ian Paisley: It is worse that that was used all over the world. The picture does not even have Northern Ireland on it.
Q219 Chair: Mr Gibbons, would you use such a map now, taking on board your point?
Niall Gibbons: Do we use that map? No.
Q220 Chair: No, not that map. Would you use such a map?
Niall Gibbons: We use maps to delineate where places are in different places around the world.
Q221 Chair: I appreciate that, but I am striking to the heart of Mr Paisley’s question. Notwithstanding the 10-year history of that map, in contemporary, real-time tourism marketing, would you use or countenance the use of that kind a map?
Niall Gibbons: No, that animated map was part of the Go Where Ireland Takes You campaign, which finished many years ago.
Q222 Kate Hoey: Welcome to both of you. While we are on the subject of pictures and maps, this photograph was in Tourism Ireland promoting the wild Atlantic. It is a beautiful picture with the surf and so on. It was actually taken at Castlerock, with the pier I remember walking on a lot when I was a child, and with a Northern Ireland athlete, who is a world record holder, in this. There is no mention of Northern Ireland at all. There is no mention of anything. You have used the word “Ireland”, but Northern Ireland was never mentioned. Following on from that map, is that the kind of publicity you tend to use, in which Northern Ireland is never mentioned separately?
Niall Gibbons: Northern Ireland is mentioned separately quite a bit. We do specific Northern Ireland campaigns in many markets around the globe. It is very hard to comment on individual pictures. We have about 27,000 pictures in our database. I will have to take up that one and see exactly what the situation is.
Q223 Kate Hoey: It is in a very, very beautiful part of Northern Ireland, Castlerock. There are great surfing areas there, in my colleague’s constituency. I will come back to that in a moment but, Mr McGrillen, Northern Ireland has apparently directly funded Tourism Ireland to the tune of over £250 million in the two decades since the whole thing was set up. Do you honestly feel that Tourism Ireland has fulfilled expectations in developing tourism revenue into Northern Ireland from Great Britain and further afield?
John McGrillen: I assume you got that figure from our accounts. In effect, the money simply flows into and out of our account. We are a mechanism by which the money flows to Tourism Ireland. We do not have any control over it. Tourism Ireland is not accountable to us; it is accountable to the North/South Ministerial Council, which sets its objectives and to which it reports. The organisation does not account to me, so it is not appropriate for me to comment on whether it has carried out the objectives it has been set. That is for Niall to comment on, as opposed to me.
Q224 Kate Hoey: When this was set up, in 2002, people were not visiting Northern Ireland very much. It was just after the worst of things, and we had the Belfast agreement. As I understand it, the clause at the end of the Belfast agreement ruled that the island of Ireland would be marketed internationally by Tourism Ireland. The Republic of Ireland saw Great Britain as foreign and international, while the Unionist politicians on the Belfast agreement believed that “international” excluded Great Britain. Given we are 20 years down the line and huge numbers of tourists are coming to Northern Ireland now, does it not make more sense for Tourism Northern Ireland to promote Northern Ireland in Great Britain specifically? To be outlawed from doing that does not seem common sense.
John McGrillen: Again, that decision was taken by politicians.
Q225 Kate Hoey: You must have a view. I do not expect you to make a political statement.
John McGrillen: To be honest, I am not sure it is appropriate for me to express a view when politicians take decisions.
Q226 Kate Hoey: You do not have any view on that. You are quite happy with things as they are.
John McGrillen: As I said, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to express a view on political decisions that have been taken by politicians.
Kate Hoey: That is fine, thank you. You are in front of a political Committee, but I understand your point of view.
Q227 Chair: Mr McGrillen, please feel free. I can rule something out of order or in order. It would be perfectly in order for you to answer Ms Hoey’s question with your personal view, so do not feel inhibited.
John McGrillen: We work closely with Tourism Ireland. How do I find the team I work with there? I find them to be an extremely competent, capable and committed team of people, with whom we have no difficulty working. That is as far as I would want to comment, at this point.
Q228 Kate Hoey: I am sure no one is suggesting that they are not. That was not really the point. Mr Gibbons, has Tourism Ireland ever, during the last 20 years, launched any bespoke marketing campaign in the vast Great Britain market to encourage visitors specifically to enter the island of Ireland market via Northern Ireland, during times when the exchange rate was very beneficial to people coming through Northern Ireland?
Niall Gibbons: We have done many over the years.
Q229 Kate Hoey: Did you have a bespoke, specific one on that?
Niall Gibbons: Yes.
Q230 Kate Hoey: When was that and what did it say?
Niall Gibbons: This year, “Game of Thrones” is a great example of a Northern Ireland-specific campaign that has been running in Great Britain. I mentioned some of the numbers in my introductory remarks. There were 8.5 million video views, and that ran not just in Great Britain. It was a specific Northern Ireland “Game of Thrones” territory campaign.
Q231 Kate Hoey: Was that using either of the two Belfast airports from Great Britain, or always Dublin?
Niall Gibbons: Sorry, this is a Northern Ireland-specific campaign, so it would not have Dublin in it. This is a Northern Ireland-specific “Game of Thrones” campaign, which is run around the globe.
Kate Hoey: I know about “Game of Thrones”. It is very special and specific.
Niall Gibbons: It is a Northern Ireland-specific campaign that does not mention Dublin.
Kate Hoey: Before that, was there anything?
Niall Gibbons: In addition, this year we have also run campaigns on Sky Sports, for example, with Darren Clarke promoting golf in Northern Ireland. We have used the Open in Portrush. We have done a lot of specific things around Northern Ireland’s Year of Food and Drink, which is specific to Northern Ireland. There are plenty of examples. On the website, at various times of the year, we share our front page and have Northern Ireland-specific campaigns, which also involve working with the carriers—for example Loganair, British Airways, Ryanair and Aer Lingus—to promote specific campaigns for Northern Ireland, Belfast or Derry/Londonderry, depending on where the access goes. We have also done city break campaigns this year to promote the new hotel access. Belfast has seen an amazing renaissance in hotel building, which has given us a great chance to promote city breaks in quarter one. Again, this is a specific Belfast-Northern Ireland campaign, which does not involve Dublin.
Q232 Kate Hoey: Could it be true, what one British ambassador once told me? It was not in the last few years, but in the last five or six years. He was told and cautioned by the Irish ambassador in that country that it was their job to do the tourism work for Northern Ireland, and that it was nothing to do with him.
Niall Gibbons: I have no idea.
Q233 Kate Hoey: Would you be surprised if a British ambassador said that?
Niall Gibbons: I would be surprised. I have worked with Irish and British ambassadors around the world, and the British ambassadors are happy to promote the island of Ireland. Every British ambassador I have worked with has said it makes absolute sense to be collaborating on a global stage, with 1.4 billion people travelling around the world. We are a very small place and collaboration makes complete sense.
Q234 Kate Hoey: Could you also make a comment on what I was personally told by a very good friend who visited one of the travel trade fairs? They went to the Tourism Ireland stall and asked for some information about the Giant’s Causeway. After some discussion, they were told that the best way to get to the Giant’s Causeway was to go to Dublin, and that there was a very good coach service up. How could that possibly happen?
Niall Gibbons: I do not know, because I do not know in which market or when that took place. For example, if you were down in Australia looking to get to the Giant’s Causeway, and it was a private sector operator—
Kate Hoey: This was in Great Britain, actually.
Niall Gibbons: I need more details to find out exactly what happened. The bottom line is that there is good direct air access from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Some 75% travel directly and that is the bottom line. I am not too sure about the circumstances of the case, but I am quite surprised, because all our staff are well trained and well immersed in how to get to Northern Ireland, and what there is to see and do.
Q235 Kate Hoey: As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, do you have a senior member of the management team based in Northern Ireland who reports to Tourism Ireland? I know you have people there, but do you have a senior person?
Niall Gibbons: We have a team of 19 people there and a specific Northern Ireland stakeholder liaison manager, who has been appointed to deal with Northern Ireland matters. But it is a core part of everybody’s job in Tourism Ireland to have Northern Ireland on their agenda.
Q236 Kate Hoey: There is a senior person on your management team now. Is this very recent?
Niall Gibbons: No, there always was. We just appointed a new person, because the other person moved to a different role.
Q237 Kate Hoey: Is it a senior person?
Niall Gibbons: Yes, a senior person on the management team.
Q238 Kate Hoey: Are they at the same level as the person responsible for the west of Ireland, perhaps?
Niall Gibbons: We do not have someone responsible for the west of Ireland, actually. We have country managers based abroad. Northern Ireland being a special case, we have a Northern Ireland stakeholder and liaison manager, who works with us and reports to a director in Tourism Ireland, who reports directly to me.
Q239 Kate Hoey: Is it true to say that you sound absolutely relaxed and that everything is hunky-dory with Tourism Ireland promoting Northern Ireland?
Niall Gibbons: We never treat this business as hunky-dory, I can tell you. Our clock goes back to zero at the beginning of January. We had 11.2 million visitors last year and they are not coming again this year. We have to be out collectively, with a very clear message and strategy, telling them that this is a better place than somewhere else. Most of those 11.2 million do not come on repeat business. They might come in three or four years’ time. It is a very competitive globe out there. We need our people to be focused on international markets, so that they can convince people to come here and that it is better and better value than going elsewhere.
That is the big challenge. It is not having the internal conversation as to whether I have someone based in the west or the south. I do not. That is the role of Fáilte Ireland, but Northern Ireland is a special case. We have 19 people based in Coleraine, and I have a stakeholder liaison manager there, who looks after the Northern Ireland industry. I do not have stakeholder relations managers for any other part of Ireland. They are all abroad.
Q240 Kate Hoey: From that, I take it that you are not interested, in the slightest, in looking at a different way of promoting Northern Ireland, given the changes that have taken place there over the last 20 years.
Niall Gibbons: We carry out a corporate plan review every three years to review what we do and how we do it. We carry out specific market reviews. We have just launched one for Great Britain, which has specific Northern Ireland deliverables. It is not just about marketing abroad, by the way; it is the industry capacity at home, on which we work closely with John. We have very specific Northern Ireland mandates for our various markets. Some deliver more capacity and deliverables than others. For example, Canada has a very strong Northern Ireland diaspora. When you get further afield to the likes of Australia and China, you are dealing with an island of Ireland proposition, but we give Northern Ireland specific prominence.
Some things absolutely stand out for Northern Ireland, such as golf. Royal County Down and Royal Portrush have hosted the Irish Open in the last number of years, and the two countries have frequently ranked in the top 10 in major publications in America, with Ireland maybe getting 10 in the top 100. That gives us a natural competitive advantage, and our staff are tuned in to make sure they come to the island, Northern Ireland and then somewhere else. I do not take that for granted, I can tell you.
Q241 Maria Caulfield: I want to return to the issue of airports. On your website, there is fairly evidently an even split between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but the evidence we have had in these sessions is that the airports of Northern Ireland do not feel they are getting a fair crack of the whip from Tourism Ireland. What input do you give to the various airports in trying to increase passenger numbers? Numbers are down in two out of the three airports in Northern Ireland.
Niall Gibbons: First, we look at air and sea access as vital to our island. They are critical. Roughly 85% of people come by air and 15% by sea. We engage with all the airports on the island of Ireland on a regular basis, through various fora, and with all the carriers. This is the lifeblood of our industry and, if it does not work, we are in trouble. We write to all the airports, seaports and carriers at the start of every year, outlining our strategic priorities, of which Northern Ireland is always one. We engage mainly with the carriers on promotion. We will put funding on the table subject to it being matched by the carrier.
For example, last year we spent about £560,000. That was matched by the carriers, either in cash or in kind, so we generated specific Northern Ireland campaigns of €1.2 million. We only turned down one, just for commercial reasons. In relation to the campaigns we did with all the carriers last year, I am surprised by Belfast’s comment because, of the funding, 83% was for routes that go into Belfast. The money does not go the airport, by the way; the airport does not get a financial benefit. It is us working hand in glove to ensure that the inbound legs of those routes are as busy as possible. I find it hard to understand how any airport could say that we have not engaged. There are conversations happening all the time.
Q242 Maria Caulfield: This is a question for both of you. Are three airports too many for Northern Ireland? Should there be just one main airport?
Niall Gibbons: That is not a matter for Tourism Ireland.
Q243 Maria Caulfield: Would it make your job of promoting Northern Ireland easier if you could direct people to one airport?
Niall Gibbons: No, not really. The bottom line is that, when you are dealing with people abroad, they are not thinking about airports. They are looking for experiences, and that is what we are trying to sell: “Why do you want to come?”
Q244 Maria Caulfield: The evidence we had from witnesses in our last session was that the airports are a factor, because of poor connectivity. They felt that, while Tourism Ireland might have Northern Ireland campaigns, it was directing people to fly to Dublin, to then go and visit Northern Ireland, but not to come into Belfast or Derry to start with. Is there a conflict of interest in that three of the main airports in the Republic are state-owned? Dublin, Cork and Shannon are state-owned, whereas two of the three airports in Northern Ireland are privately owned. Is there a conflict of interest between Tourism Ireland and the state-owned airports?
Niall Gibbons: No, because we do not have any investment in the airports. The bottom line for us is that our job is to ensure consumers come to the island of Ireland and Northern Ireland on their holidays. The contract between the airport and the carrier is a matter for them. There are bigger contracts that are not relevant to us. Our job is to try to motivate demand for people to take those flights by promoting them, rather than going somewhere else.
Q245 Maria Caulfield: Although I totally take on board that there is “Game of Thrones” and golf advertising on your website, we heard from the hotel industry in Northern Ireland that, because people are not being directed to go into Northern Ireland directly, but to travel to Northern Ireland from Dublin, hotels are missing out. The tourism industry as a whole is missing out, because people do not start in Northern Ireland. The rest of the tourism sector is missing out. Could Tourism Ireland do anything to promote people flying directly into Northern Ireland, rather than Dublin, Cork or Shannon?
Niall Gibbons: As I said, we operate campaigns directly into Northern Ireland. The bottom line here is a major connectivity mismatch. Look back at the air access picture. We do an inventory twice a year to examine how things are going, in which we analyse every route. If you go back 10 years, the number of air seats coming into Northern Ireland every week was approximately 105,000. It is now about 110,000. That is an increase of about 5% over 10 years, which is very poor. We would love to see more than that, because that is the factor that will drive volume. In the Republic of Ireland, the numbers increased by about 48% in that period.
A number of factors drive that. On short-haul routes, APD is a significant factor. While it is not for us to comment on taxation matters generally, I was talking to a very senior person in Ryanair last week, who gave me the commercial perspective on this. Take, for example, a route from London to Belfast for a couple coming for a weekend at the end of September. If you went on the site last night, you could have bought a ticket for £45 but, out of that, £26 is air passenger duty. That automatically puts the airport at a competitive disadvantage when, down the road, a flight from Dublin to Berlin attracts zero travel tax. That is a significant factor on short-haul routes, in terms of the commercial proposition of running routes directly into Northern Ireland. I said this to the Treasury. It is not for Tourism Ireland to comment directly on taxation, but the feedback we get from carriers all the time is that this is a significant issue on short-haul routes.
I am not here to speak for Ryanair, but it says it has raised the issue many times. It is opening new routes in the likes of Israel, Jordan and Armenia, getting generous support and low taxation rates, and is leaving Northern Ireland behind, to some extent. In the Republic of Ireland, air travel tax was abolished to zero six or seven years ago. That was a major factor in one carrier, Ryanair—which brings about 45% of all passengers on to the island of Ireland—increasing passenger numbers by about 6.5 million. That is a significant number.
On the transatlantic side, it is a different kettle of fish. You do not have an APD factor in that. However, you have very established routes and a network in Aer Lingus, which is not promoting Ireland in America, by the way, but promoting Europe and using Dublin as a gateway. You also have customs and border protection clearance in Dublin and Shannon, which you do not have in Belfast. That is a significant factor in making it attractive. We have 1 million people from the United Kingdom transiting through Dublin alone to go to the United States, because they arrive into the US as if they were a domestic passenger. These are major factors that are driving more connectivity into Republic of Ireland airports than Northern Ireland.
As far as we can, we will support any route into Northern Ireland airports that has the capacity to drive inbound tourism. We have worked with all the carriers. We have a good relationship with them. Of all the people who approached us to do co-operative funding, only one did not meet the criteria, so I cannot see how somebody could come in and say we did not support them. We do very little marketing with Dublin, by the way, because most of those routes do not suffer from market failure.
We would, for example, get in behind Dublin Airport on a China route, because that is a strategic imperative for the whole island of Ireland. We did not have connectivity before, and now we have 10 flights every week. We would give marketing support for a route like that. We would put marketing support into a strategic route from, for example, the west coast of the United States, where the island of Ireland has no connectivity. We would never help the likes of a Dublin-London route, for example, because there is no market failure there.
Q246 Maria Caulfield: Can I push you on air passenger duty? Do you feel it is not your role to lobby on air passenger duty, if there was an Assembly in place? As a representative of Tourism Ireland, you have just stated that it is a significant factor in stopping people flying into Northern Ireland. Is it not then your role to lobby politicians to do something about it?
Niall Gibbons: My role is to market the island of Ireland abroad and support Northern Ireland to realise its tourism potential. When there are imbalances like that, I bring them to the attention of officials, as I did with the Treasury two years ago, when it was looking at the APD issue as part of a consultation on the programme for government. We appeared at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, when it came to Belfast in 2015, and gave evidence on how the imbalance of air connectivity has impacted on south/north figures. I know, because I was talking to a senior official at Ryanair last week, that all the lobbying has been done. All the facts have been put on the table.
Q247 Maria Caulfield: Did you make representations to the Assembly, when it was up and running, on air passenger duty?
Niall Gibbons: We made our sponsor Department, the Department for the Economy, aware of all the facts and figures, as did some of the carriers. The facts on this are well known. I am not putting any new information on the record here today.
Q248 Jim Shannon: Gentlemen, it is nice to see you here. Thank you for what you are doing and the jobs you do globally. The tourism figures you have given indicate how well things are going. The research I have read says tourism brings people together and opens our hearts and minds. Therefore, the roles and positions you have are critical to the growth of Northern Ireland, and building our relationships internally and externally. I read in the paper last week that there were 560,000 visitors from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland in the last year. I am keen to see how we can build on that. I want to ask you a couple of questions, but I do not want to be critical. I want to be firm, if you do not mind, in relation to those.
Chair: Be as firm as you like, Jim.
Jim Shannon: I will be firm but nice. Tourism Ireland promotes events or locations to go to, such as the Giant’s Causeway, Titanic Belfast, the Gobbins and the Causeway Coastal Route. Are you aware that the Mount Stewart gardens in my constituency are in the top 10 gardens in the world? Never a word do we hear about Mount Stewart. Never a word do we hear about Strangford Lough. Forgive me for saying this; I mean no disrespect to those who represent the Causeway, the Gobbins and elsewhere. I want to know why you are not promoting Mount Stewart and Strangford Lough. They are the jewel in the crown, not just for Strangford, but for the whole of Northern Ireland. They are the gateway to Northern Ireland.
Another thing that we never see promoted is the Ulster Scots culture. I never hear a word about the Ulster Scots culture. That is important to a large proportion of people in Northern Ireland, and it is a real historical and ancestral thing. I have had occasion in the past to go to the States, and the number of Americans who connect with their locations back home make it really important. There is a tourism potential to develop there. When you go to China on a sales mission, you cannot only promote the Causeway coast. Other parts of Northern Ireland are important as well. Tell us why you do not have Mount Stewart or Strangford Lough in your tourism plan of scenic places. I have other questions, but that is the first.
Niall Gibbons: This is a great problem to have. Mount Stewart is one of the jewels in the crown and has been featured in our promotions abroad. It has had visits from international journalists. Houses and gardens in general are really strong on the international side, particularly in markets such as the United States and Canada. It is not possible, unfortunately, to put everybody on the front cover of the brochure every year. That is a challenge, but I agree that Mount Stewart is an amazing platform, which has had great investment. Our teams have been on familiarisation visits. We have had international journalists visiting Mount Stewart. People at home do not always see our range of international publicity, and houses and gardens get good cover internationally.
People sometimes say, “I always see the Giant’s Causeway. I always see ‘Game of Thrones’. I always see Titanic Belfast”. They are the properties that are out on the international marketplace at trade shows with us, which is probably why people see more of that tangible piece, but we are open to the idea of gardens going abroad to promote Northern Ireland. That platform is open.
I would like to comment on the Ulster Scots side, because I have been involved in that for many years. To put this in perspective, on the United States census, about 34 million people tick the “Irish” box for their ancestry. The “Scots-Irish” box is about 4.5 million. There is a unique and distinct identity in places such as Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas. We have done research in those markets, and there is a fascinating story about the journey from Ulster to the United States, from 1717 to the 1780s, which predated the famine. A lot of those people have assimilated into American society. We have run focus groups with them to see what motivating factors might drive them.
For the last 10 years, our flagship event has been the Stone Mountain Highland Games in Atlanta. That is mainly a Scottish affair, but it promotes the Scots Irish network. We have the biggest stand of anybody there, and are ably assisted by the Ulster Historical Foundation and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. It is a good platform for us to connect to that community. In promoting that aspect of our culture abroad, we need to see more to do at home. There are many Presidents with Scots-Irish ancestry, but we need a trail at home so that, when people come back, they can trace their ancestors and see what there is to do. Canada offers potential in that space too. In those two markets, the United States and Canada, we have our first familiarisation visits from the Scots-Irish community coming. I would be happy to connect them with you when they come over, later in the year.
John McGrillen: On our side, we have someone dedicated to working with that particular group. It is a disparate group of people, in terms of what is on offer, so packaging that product to present it to the market has been a challenge from our perspective, but it is something we are proactively working on. My team goes to Stone Mountain along with Niall’s team to promote the Scots-Irish, as they call it, or Ulster Scots offer to the diaspora in the US.
It is interesting that you pick up on China, because I have just come back from a trade mission to China with Tourism Ireland. The point that you made was about always looking at the Giant’s Causeway or Titanic Belfast. This is the question we were asked in China: what is your image? What one thing stands out that we can use as an image to attract people to the island of Ireland? In that instance, you would probably look towards the Giant’s Causeway or Titanic Belfast. We need to use those big hooks to get people to come to Northern Ireland in the first instance. That is what we try to do.
Our campaign in the Republic for the last three years has been entitled Say Hello to More. That was about two things, one of which was value for money after the devaluation of sterling, saying, “You get more for your money in Northern Ireland, so go there”. But we did a major piece of research in the Republic, and it was clear not just that people had little knowledge of Northern Ireland, but the northern part of the island of Ireland was a challenge. They also felt, “Why should we go to Northern Ireland? We probably already have everything that they have up there down here, and it is a bit closer to home”.
We focused on identifying those things that are different, that people are not aware of. You can see all our ads tell people it is two hours from Dublin to Belfast, because people had no sense of how close Northern Ireland happened to be. We have focused on those places that were not as visible to that market as they could have been. We have done distinct promotions on Strangford Lough, the Sperrins and Fermanagh Lakelands. Part of our challenge, if I am honest, is building the infrastructure that meets the tourist need. You will know, Jim, as it is your constituency, that it can be hard to find somewhere to stay. For a coach operator, finding somewhere to put up a coach group of people in that part of Northern Ireland is difficult.
We are now working closely with Ards and North Down Borough Council and a cluster of businesses in the tourism sector, in and around the whole of Strangford, both those parts that are in the Strangford constituency and what is now Newry, Mourne and Down Council, to see how we can work together collectively with the private sector to develop experiences to promote that area. That is what people want now; they want experiences, as opposed to just going to look at things.
Strangford has a lot to offer. There is Mount Stewart and Castle Ward, but probably its biggest asset is the lough itself and giving people access to it. I argue that we need to concentrate, along with the council, on how we provide greater access to that lough and encourage the private sector to come along and create activities and things to do, which people who come to the island of Ireland on holiday want to consume.
Q249 Jim Shannon: The Ards Peninsula, in particular for Ulster Scots, is somewhere that has potential. It is the birthplace of the Ulster Scots, or the Scots-Irish, as the Americans refer to them. The Giant’s Causeway is one of the top 10 wonders in the world, but I remind you again that Mount Stewart gardens are in the top 10 gardens in the whole world. Therefore, we could do better with it. I reinforce that again and leave that thought with you.
John McGrillen: It is worth making the point that people pick up on the big campaigns, but a lot of the work we and Tourism Ireland do is in the digital space. With digital technology and through data analytics, you can now identify people who have a specific interest in gardens, cycling or golf, and direct your messages directly to them. We will do that work, but it would not be visible. The ads that land with me or go into my Facebook account would be different from yours, because my interests might be different from yours. There is a range of tremendous gardens in Northern Ireland and a lot of people have an interest in them, so we will target them specifically, because we know what their profile looks like through the social media channels we work through.
Q250 Jim Shannon: The Ards and North Down Council, along with you and the Newry, Mourne and Down Council, is going to promote Strangford Lough, because it sees the benefit and potential opportunity. When it comes to doing tourism events—Stone Mountain, as you referred to, is one thing—at a time of stringency and financial restrictions, councils are not able to do as many promotions as they would like. I suggested at another Committee meeting that councils could work better together. They would not go to every event they might wish to, as they do not have the finance for that, but is it possible for councils to work collectively? I am not sure who would bring that together. Would Tourism Ireland suggest that to them?
John McGrillen: I see that as our role. As Niall said, in trying to get visibility, the international marketplace is very competitive. People can choose from thousands of places to go to across the globe, so we need to convince them to come to Northern Ireland. We need to make sure that we work collectively, so we are presenting all that Northern Ireland has to offer, as opposed to what Armagh has to offer, versus Belfast, versus Derry/Londonderry. The challenge is for all of us and the councils to work together to present itineraries that encourage people to come not just to Strangford, but maybe to spend some time in Strangford and Belfast, to go up to the Causeway, to Derry and down into the Lakelands, and stay two or three days. That requires us to work collectively.
In fairness to the new councils, they are operating in a much more strategic way than councils perhaps did in the past. You know that my background was in local government, so I have a good relationship with most of the councils and we work collectively in that space. Hopefully you will see, in the very near future, a new branding for Northern Ireland as an experience that incorporates all those councils and what they have to offer, to give Niall something to sell more holistically in the marketplace.
Q251 Jim Shannon: This is my last question. Given that tourism in Great Britain is Tourism Ireland’s responsibility, why did Tourism Northern Ireland request VisitBritain’s support for promotional activity and knowledge-sharing? Why did you do that? At the back of my mind, I am wondering whether that tells me Tourism NI would be better doing this on its own. I am aware there is a skills gap as well. Could you give us some ideas of how you are going to address that, as a follow-on?
John McGrillen: That could take two hours in itself.
Chair: We do not have two hours, I am afraid.
John McGrillen: On VisitBritain, as I said previously, we will take every option available to us to sell Northern Ireland. Tourism Ireland is out in the marketplace doing work. There are occasions when there is an opportunity for us to work with VisitBritain. We have an MoU with VisitBritain and, when that opportunity arises, we will take it too. We do lots of knowledge exchange and we will tap into a range of sources where that might come from. That might be from VisitBritain, TripAdvisor or a host of people who are active in the marketplace. Where our industry can learn from any source, we are happy to have it and make it available to the industry in Northern Ireland to make the most of it. We really want to build our capacity to move forward.
It is fair to say we have a skills gap right across these islands. We have a labour supply issue. There are challenges in the zero unemployment we now have in Northern Ireland. At this point, the industry is dependent on 20% migrant labour, so what might happen with Brexit presents some challenges there. I understand that the Department is hoping to produce a skills action plan in the near future, with 11 key actions it wants to identify and put in place to get everybody in that space working more collectively to address the challenge. It is not unique to Northern Ireland; I was at the Westminster Media Forum yesterday and that issue came up from every part of the United Kingdom.
Q252 Mr Campbell: Niall, in your opening summation, you gave us very impressive growth figures. I do not know if you have them to hand, but you referred to a series of double-digit percentage increases and you particularly related how Northern Ireland had outpaced—I think that was the word you used—the UK as a whole. I would like more context on that. First, do you accept that, 10 to 15 years ago, the Northern Ireland product base was at an infinitely lower level than the UK as a whole?
Niall Gibbons: There is no question but that Northern Ireland has gone through a dramatic renaissance in its tourism picture. That is a factor. It gives us the capacity to sell the destination overall. There is no question about it; they go hand in glove. The figures that I quoted, and the rate at which it has outpaced, are significant. This is not normally seen, because the figures I quoted are looking back only five years, not 15.
Looking at the overall figures from last year, 2.2 million people came to Northern Ireland from abroad. That includes people who came to visit friends and relatives, to study, for business and on holiday. The holiday bit is what Tourism Ireland is after, in conjunction with John’s team. Those holiday visitors were significant last year. North America was up 22%; Britain, up 10%; mainland Europe, up 5%. UK tourism fell by 1% last year. Spend in UK tourism fell by 7% last year. That is a significant gain for Northern Ireland last year and over the last five years. I accept that, when you look over the longer term, there are legacy issues.
Q253 Mr Campbell: Even over a five-year period, the UK as a whole is at a much higher level of influx of visitors and spend than Northern Ireland would have been five years ago. Do you accept that?
Niall Gibbons: Of course, yes. It is a big country.
Q254 Mr Campbell: The capacity to grow in Northern Ireland, given a fair wind and a good product, was always going to be better, because we are at a much lower base and we had the problems with the Troubles, et cetera, which thankfully are fast receding. We would expect and hope to get a significant increase, which you have pointed to, and we have, but we had much further to grow. You made the contrast between the growth of Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole. Can you make a similar contrast between the growth rate for Northern Ireland as a whole and the Irish Republic, in the same timeframe?
Niall Gibbons: I would have to get the figures, but I am fairly sure it has outpaced that as well. There is a need for some clarification here. It is not a question that, if we build it, they will come. We have Titanic, for the sake of argument, which has been voted the world’s leading tourism attraction. People will not come unless we tell them about it, which is where the marketing role comes in. We have to go out and generate demand. This is where the tourism jigsaw has to fit together. When John puts his strategic priorities together, we have good sight of them. John is represented on our board. We work in a collaborative fashion so we know what is in the pipeline when we go out to generate that demand. I accept certain points in relation to Northern Ireland having lagged behind in investment but, at the end of the day, the investment we have made to generate demand from abroad has been very good. The Northern Ireland contribution to our budget is 30% less than it was 10 years ago. We have had significant successes in that space and should take credit for them.
Q255 Mr Campbell: You are going to come back to us with some comparable figures.
Niall Gibbons: Yes.
Mr Campbell: For clarity purposes, I would like to see the same comparison you made between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK for Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, over the same timeframe and in the same fields of operation, within GB and Ireland, and then overseas.
Niall Gibbons: That is no problem.
Q256 Mr Campbell: The other thing comes back to the issue of airports. How is Tourism Ireland mainly funded?
Niall Gibbons: Most of our funding comes from the Government Departments I mentioned earlier: the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport in the Republic of Ireland. They account for more than 95% of our funding. If you look at it on a jurisdiction basis, this year approximately 21% of our funding will come from Northern Ireland and 79% from the Republic of Ireland. That might vary fractionally with exchange rate movements, but that is typically what we expect.
Q257 Mr Campbell: That is helpful. Understanding that 80% of your funding, if you round up the figures, is from the Irish Republic’s Government, and Dublin Airport is owned by the same Government that funds you to the tune of 80%, you can see why somebody who owns a privately owned airport in Belfast would ask, “How can we possibly have a level playing field?”
Niall Gibbons: In respect of what?
Q258 Mr Campbell: If the Government that funds you to the tune of 80% also owns Dublin Airport, why would a privately owned Belfast airport think it is getting a fair deal?
Niall Gibbons: The bottom line is that we write to all the airports at the start of the year. They get a level playing field and joint marketing. We do not fund airports. Our job is to work with airlines to generate demand. There are nine airports across the island of Ireland that have international flights. They are welcome to write back to us, when we write to them setting out our strategic priorities. The bottom line is that I report to a board. Dublin Airport, by the way, is a commercial state entity; it does not get Government grants. It has to generate its own income, but that is not a factor in our consideration. Our consideration is whether this will generate more business. That is the only factor that determines whether we invest in a route. We do not invest in airports. It is good that they can generate more routes, and our business is to generate more demand. That is the ultimate thing: can we generate more passengers on those routes? If they fall below certain critical thresholds, we lose the route. If we lose the route and we go into decline, which I experienced in 2009-10, we are all in trouble.
Q259 Mr Campbell: I have one final question. The Open at Royal Portrush will be a fantastic event, the biggest event anywhere on the island this year and maybe in any other year. Do you accept that, in targeting the visitors coming to that, any of the three airports, Londonderry in particular, would be convenient, and Belfast City or Belfast International would be more advantageous than Dublin for that that event?
Niall Gibbons: That comes down to the customer and what they are coming for. Are they coming only for that or for something more? The bottom line is that this has great capacity to showcase Northern Ireland in terms of golf. It is a great showcase for everybody across the island of Ireland—to have one of the majors coming to this part of the world is incredible. It is similar to when we had the Irish Open; those were smaller events, but they were hugely successful in Northern Ireland, not just in terms of hosting events, but in showcasing Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland.
John McGrillen: I will pick up on that. We have a pretty clear breakdown of where those tickets have been sold. Not surprisingly, 46% of them have been sold in Northern Ireland. The next biggest group was sold in the Republic of Ireland and the next in GB. I imagine most people travelling from GB will fly in through the three airports in Northern Ireland. Then I understand about 10% have been sold in the United States. Given that we have no direct access, the likelihood is that some of those people will fly in through Dublin or, perhaps, Heathrow.
Q260 Mr Campbell: I accept that, but that 10% is 10% of a huge figure. It is a significant figure. We are not talking about 10% of a couple of thousand people. We are talking about 10% of 150,000.
John McGrillen: There are 200-odd direct flights a week from North America to Dublin, and we are an hour and a half away. Portrush is two and a half hours from Dublin Airport. We are encouraging people not just to come and watch the golf, but to come, stop, stay and play golf. Many of those people who come from America want to play the trophy courses. They want to play at Royal Portrush, Royal County Down, Ballybunion and Portmarnock. We are blessed, in that we have some fantastic golf courses in the north, and probably get a greater share of the golfer spend than we do from others coming to the island of Ireland from the US and spending money.
Q261 Lady Hermon: Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Chairman; patience is a virtue. Thank you very much for coming to give us evidence this morning. I am delighted to have you here. Could we stay temporarily on the issue of airports, particularly Belfast International Airport? I am looking at you, Mr Gibbons. Am I correct in repeating that the chief executive of the international airport is on your board?
Niall Gibbons: For Tourism Ireland, yes.
Q262 Lady Hermon: The chief executive of Belfast International Airport is on Tourism Ireland’s board of directors, I presume. You are nodding your head in agreement.
Niall Gibbons: Yes.
Q263 Lady Hermon: You will be aware that, a couple of weeks ago, we took evidence from a number of witnesses, including a representative of Belfast International Airport. To say that the comments were unflattering is probably a mild description of the criticisms of Tourism Ireland. Bearing in mind that the chief executive of the international airport sits on your board, had you heard those criticisms before in the privacy of the board? Can you confirm that? Were you surprised by the evidence that was given to the Select Committee?
Niall Gibbons: I was surprised; I was shocked, to be honest with you. I really was.
Q264 Lady Hermon: What was the conversation with the gentleman like afterwards? Are you allowed to tell us and give us an insight?
Niall Gibbons: I have not met him since. Do you mean Uel Hoey?
Chair: Yes.
Niall Gibbons: I have not met him since the evidence session here. I watched it and we had a discussion at our board last week, but those conversations are confidential.
Q265 Chair: Was he at the board meeting?
Niall Gibbons: No, I believe he was on business in North America actually.
Q266 Lady Hermon: I think you have put that in context here, this morning. Tourism Ireland is organised under the auspices of the North/South Ministerial Council. In the absence of Ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly since January 2017, what has been the accountability of Tourism Ireland in that time? We have not had a functioning Assembly for a considerable period, unfortunately.
Niall Gibbons: We have a board, which was appointed by the Ministers in each jurisdiction, when we had a functioning Assembly, and in respect of the Irish Government. We have 12 members on our board: six from Northern Ireland and six from the south of Ireland. The board is established under the Companies Act. It is a company registered in Dublin. It meets eight times a year. We continue to report on our activities and agree our business plan with our sponsor Departments, which are ultimately the funders of the organisation. That is the way things have functioned since the Assembly has been in suspension.
Q267 Lady Hermon: Could you give us the names of the six representatives from Northern Ireland? Tourism Ireland has six from Northern Ireland and six from the Republic of Ireland. Who are the representatives from Northern Ireland?
Niall Gibbons: I am under the cosh now with the camera on me.
Lady Hermon: I am sorry; you can send us the names. We could Google them, I am sure.
Niall Gibbons: John McGrillen is one. Kathryn Thomson is head of National Museums Northern Ireland. There is Graham Keddie. Christopher Brooke, who is behind me, is the vice-chair. Harry Connolly is from west Belfast, and there is Trevor Clarke.
Q268 Lady Hermon: There is a very high-profile team sitting on the board. That is interesting. As you will know, at some stage we have to mention that some of the candidates for leadership of the Conservative party believe, or seem to give the impression, that the United Kingdom can leave the EU on 31 October without a deal. They seem fairly relaxed about it. It beggars belief that they are, but that is the argument they are presenting. I thought it was significant that you mentioned there is no clearance facility at Belfast Airport for flights, at the present time. That was one of the differences you mentioned between Dublin and Shannon, about clearance. What would be the impact of a no-deal Brexit on tourism in Northern Ireland?
Niall Gibbons: The implications are very severe for our industry, because it is based on certainty and economic wellbeing. Remember we are talking about people taking their holidays. When the UK voted to leave the European Union, we established a Great Britain-based Brexit taskforce, which consisted of leading members of the UK and Irish travel industry, to try to assess travel trends. We carried out four waves of research here in Britain. We also carried out one wave of research in the United States, and also in Germany and France, to assess the impact on consumers’ intention to travel arising from what was happening.
Remember, people do not make their travel arrangements based on political events. People are looking to have a holiday and a good time, but some of the uncertainty that arose from the debate indicated, when we did our last wave of research in January here in Britain, that the capacity for people to postpone their holidays had moved into double digits, as we approached March and April. A double-digit decline in visitor numbers would be significant.
We also did research specifically on Northern Ireland. It is obviously part of the United Kingdom, so it is not impacted by currency. The winner from uncertainty is sometimes the domestic market. Sometimes people will say, “I will stay at home, rather than travel abroad”. But our research indicated that the most likely winners would be Scotland, the Lake District, Devon and Cornwall, which are well-established tourism areas. The losers, and it is by a small margin but they would still not be winning, would be the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, because you have to take a ferry or a flight. That is just an additional hassle factor.
Internationally, we are picking up commentary from mainland Europe about what the additional travel requirements would be for Northern Ireland. Remember, we now have 800 travel agents including Northern Ireland as part of their Ireland holiday. If there is a requirement to get additional car insurance arrangements or uncertainty about the border, these would not be the sorts of issues that were there 25 years ago, but they are just an additional hassle factor. There is a risk that travel or tour operators may take Northern Ireland off their itineraries. Remember, they are producing their brochures 12 to 18 months in advance. These are people looking a long way out. They do not like uncertainty.
In North America, there is not as large an awareness of Brexit and what it means, so we are not picking up any significant or real concern in that market. But, in markets as far away as China, we are getting queries from the travel trade about what all this means. What is the future of the British-Irish visa scheme, which has been a terrific example of co-operation between the UK and Ireland, in China and India? Travellers or visitors can come from those countries to the UK and Ireland as if it is one country, for tourism purposes. I know everyone is saying that we all want that to stay. Everyone is saying that but, unless we have certainty, that could act as a brake on the growth levels we have seen. In some cases, they could go into decline.
John McGrillen: The risks are as Niall has pointed out. Anecdotally, we get the same feedback. We are getting questions around people needing two visas. “Would we need to get separate travel insurance?” There are issues around car hire. That uncertainty does not help. As Gerry Lennon reported when he was giving evidence, there have been issues of uncertainty as to whether additional travel documentation would be required. People who have been looking at Belfast as a potential conference venue have decided not to go down that route. The bigger risk is not that Belfast has made a pitch and someone has taken the decision to go somewhere else; the bigger issue is not being on that list of options that people are considering in the first instance.
Q269 Lady Hermon: Are you seeing that?
John McGrillen: The feedback we are getting from the International Convention Centre in Belfast is that it is seeing a fall-off in the number of requests for proposals from European organisations that it would like to target.
Q270 Mr Campbell: Mr Lennon said that not a single cruise ship has cancelled. Is that wrong?
John McGrillen: That is correct. No cruise ships have cancelled as a result.
Mr Campbell: That is a relevant point.
Chair: You may indicate to come back, but Lady Hermon has the floor.
Q271 Lady Hermon: Thank you, Chairman. I was not actually asking about cruise ships. I was asking about conferences and whether Belfast or Northern Ireland featured. Your reply was that there has been a fall-off.
John McGrillen: That is the assessment given by the ICC.
Q272 Lady Hermon: How do you combat that?
John McGrillen: There is a strong British association conference market in the UK. We combat that by becoming quite laser-like about which associations in the UK we target. Those conferences are not going outside the UK. They typically go to a city somewhere on these islands, so it is about doing your best to uplift your share of that market. In saying that, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Manchester are probably all facing the same challenge. They are probably all focusing in the same way, so the competition for that UK association business will get somewhat more intense.
Q273 Lady Hermon: There are concerns and uncertainty about the possibility of a no-deal exit at the end of October. If there is no deal then, there will be no implementation period, meaning we come straight out of the EU. What preparations are your organisations making to face that possibility? It is only a possibility. Let us hope it does not come to pass.
Niall Gibbons: Our Great Britain-based Brexit taskforce will continue to meet, as long as there are issues arising from this. We also have a working group back in our own organisation that deals with this. If we are looking towards having the same type of situation in October that we had in March—I do not want to use the word “cliff edge”, but we will be heading towards the end—a significant amount of reassurance will need to be given to the international travel community that it is business as usual. That is the message we have been giving: it is business as usual and you will still have a seamless and very enjoyable holiday in Ireland, north or south.
When the international media noise starts to elevate about some of these issues, we get drowned out. All we can do is work with the tour operator community, and put reassuring, positive messages out there on the PR front. If consumers worry that they will be worse off economically, they are less likely to travel, in general, not just to Ireland or the UK. That is a concern to all of us as we head into the travel season for 2020. This is the biggest risk on the agenda at the moment. There are a large number of uncertainties across the UK and Ireland for the tourism and travel industry, and we hope to get as much reassurance, as early as possible, to make sure we do not head into 2020 with it hanging over our heads.
Q274 Lady Hermon: A no-deal Brexit is the biggest risk to tourism in Northern Ireland at present.
Niall Gibbons: It is for Ireland too, by the way. It is for the whole island of Ireland.
Q275 Lady Hermon: Could I move on to something completely different? It has not been mentioned, but we have taken evidence about liquor licensing laws in Northern Ireland. There was a recent consultation by the Department for Communities. It has closed, but it was undertaken specifically in relation to the Open golf competition and changes for special events. Does the issue of liquor licensing legislation in Northern Ireland need to be looked at more broadly, rather than just for a special event?
John McGrillen: You had representation from Hospitality Ulster and the Northern Ireland Hotels Federation, both of which cogently made the case for changes to liquor licensing. We would agree with the conclusion they have come to about the impact that has on the attractiveness of Belfast and Northern Ireland as a whole, as a short-break destination. We would support the case being made by Hospitality Ulster for those changes.
Q276 Lady Hermon: That leaves me in a predicament, because their evidence was contradictory. Hospitality Ulster was not particularly charmed or impressed by the proposal to change the legislation for a special event, but wanted the liquor licensing legislation changed across the board.
John McGrillen: I will be clear then.
Lady Hermon: That would be helpful.
Chair: Clarity is always a good thing.
John McGrillen: We are absolutely supportive of what was proposed in the consultation for the event. There is an expectation by the patrons who have been going to the Open for years about when and how they can access alcohol. We support that. However, are we supportive of broader legislative change at some future point? Absolutely, we are.
Q277 Lady Hermon: You know it would be tricky, to put it mildly, for the Secretary of State to take that legislation through the House of Commons here, which is the only forum she has to change the legislation for the Open golf tournament, while not taking legislation through to compensate the victims of historical institutional abuse.
John McGrillen: I fully understand that.
Lady Hermon: You would not wish her to give priority to liquor licensing, I am sure.
John McGrillen: That is a decision for the Secretary of State.
Chair: I am not sure Mr McGrillen can legitimately opine upon that.
John McGrillen: I agree. That decision is for the Secretary of State, not for me.
Q278 Conor McGinn: Welcome, both. It is nice to see you here and to be able to talk about these issues. Niall, half of your board is from Northern Ireland. You have intensively focused campaigns on attracting people to come to Northern Ireland. You have put in a lot of resources. Do you not hear from Cork, Kerry, Wicklow and Galway that you are focusing far too much on Northern Ireland, and you should be doing much more for areas in the south-east and west? Is that accusation levelled at you from those quarters?
Niall Gibbons: It is something we hear from time to time. One of the biggest balances you have as a national organisation is trying to cover two parts of an island, so to speak. Everyone wants to be on the front cover and get attention for all the right reasons. One of the phenomena is that, while we have had an amazing renaissance and a golden era for tourism across the whole island of Ireland, that benefit has not always been evenly spread. Urban areas have done exceptionally well. There are rural parts of the island of Ireland that are not seeing the lift, which are being demanding in trying to get their fair share.
It is not just a Northern Ireland phenomenon, but parts of the west of Ireland have seen great success from the Wild Atlantic Way. There is a view that the southern part of the Wild Atlantic Way has done exceptionally well, Kerry and Cork, but the northern part, Mayo to Donegal, could see a lot more. Border counties are feeling distress, particularly arising from Brexit. They were the first hit, because of currency movements. We are feeling it in pockets around the place, and yes, they sometimes comment that there is too much focus on Northern Ireland. That is a balancing act that I have to try to overcome.
Q279 Conor McGinn: In the last fortnight, you have published what I think is a really ambitious strategy to grow tourism from Britain to the island of Ireland. You aim to increase tourism from Britain to the island of Ireland by 25% by 2022. That is a hugely ambitious target, is it not?
Niall Gibbons: To the island of Ireland, it is 25%; to Northern Ireland, it is 33%. That is another example of supporting Northern Ireland to realise its tourism potential. There are a number of pillars underpinning that strategy. It was done in conjunction with the industry, John’s team and southern colleagues in Fáilte Ireland. It sets out a blueprint not just for marketing, but also for industry to create hub experiences and give people a reason to get out of the cities into the rural countryside, to improve not just connectivity. We have focused on airports today but, for a lot of tourists coming across the island of Ireland, it is sometimes the last mile. It is easy to get to Dublin, Belfast or Derry, but how do I get beyond them, unless I hire a car? What are the public transport links like? That is not a Tourism Ireland role, but this is the benefit of a joined-up approach. How do we make that last local mile work, if you go to a small rural village and want to go to the next one? Public transport links are maybe not what we want them to be.
In addition, digital marketing is going to take on a much more important phase. We have a golden opportunity, because we are touching over 1.5 billion people a year with our advertising. We have a huge global reach through social media. We have 4.4 million fans on Facebook, who have an average of 220 friends each, so that alone gives us a resource of 900 million people. If we can get everybody to share one thing once, we will have a big audience. Personalisation of advertising is likely to come on stream in the next number of years, so we can get the right message to the right person at the right time. If you have been watching golf on Sky Sports, using that as an example, in a number of years’ time you are more likely to be getting personalised adverts. You perhaps have been to Northern Ireland before, so maybe you will come back next time and try something else. The marketing is getting much more sophisticated, which gives us the opportunity to grow by those numbers, but only if we all pull together.
Q280 Conor McGinn: Although this is an island of Ireland strategy to attract visitors from Britain, the currency is the same and there are fantastic links between both London and Belfast airports, but also regionally. Graham Keddie and his team at Belfast International Airport do a fantastic job. Brian Ambrose and his team at City Airport do a great job as well, but I have had to be honest with both of them and say, “Of course I use both of your airports but, occasionally, I fly from Liverpool to Dublin and come back via Belfast International to Liverpool or Belfast City to Manchester. If I fly from London Luton or Stansted, I go to International too. If I go from Heathrow, I go to Dublin”. While there would be very clear and obvious aspects of this campaign that should be targeted on direct entry into Northern Ireland, your view is presumably about getting people on to the island of Ireland. I occasionally travel by boat, if I am going home with family from Holyhead, and drive up. The focus should be on getting people to come to the island of Ireland and then to visit Northern Ireland, whichever point of access they use. That is a priority for Tourism Ireland.
Niall Gibbons: More importantly, it is about giving people reasons to come in the first instance. Remember, we are competing against other destinations. If you are living in the Manchester area, for the sake of argument, with the cost of flights to go somewhere like Palma, where you can have a week in the sun, we have to convince you that, rather than going there, you might think about coming here. Then, by the way, there are a variety of ways of getting here. There are 230,000 seats every week from GB into the island of Ireland, every summer. It is a fiercely competitive market. There are 45,000 car spaces on our ferries every week on the northern, southern and central corridors. It is a fiercely competitive market.
We will probably spend about €7 million or £6 million in Great Britain this year. That is a drop in the ocean compared with what others are spending, so we have to be targeted in our messaging and what we are saying. Motivating people is the biggest challenge we have, and we are carrying out research in this market all the time. Most people in Great Britain, and these are people who do not have ancestral connections, just are not sure enough about what they would do if they were spending seven days on the island of Ireland. “How would I fill a holiday if I was going over there, as opposed to going somewhere else?”
Q281 Conor McGinn: I want to move on to another topic, but I also note that you have a Northern Ireland-specific strategy to encourage visitors from Canada. The number of people visiting from Canada has doubled in the last five years, so it might be useful if you could send us some written information on that to inform our deliberations. Who knows? There could be potential for a direct route from Canada into Northern Ireland, as part of that strategy.
Niall, I will just ask you and then come to John. I have seen your Tourism Minister Brendan Griffin come here and promote the island of Ireland as a whole. He is hugely charismatic. He gives a fantastic speech about his own family connections in Yorkshire, his history in England, and now he is in Kerry. Has Northern Ireland suffered from not having a Minister of its own to do that, promote Northern Ireland and go that extra mile in making a personal connection with people as a representative of the Northern Ireland Executive?
Niall Gibbons: It is a gap, to be quite honest with you. I am in a situation in which there has been a Tourism Minister in the Irish Government for about 40 years. Today, I have two Ministers. I have a Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, which covers a very broad portfolio, and a Minister of State for Tourism and Sport, so I have two Ministers. I have a Government strategy. It is well joined up. There is a Global Ireland 2025 platform so, from an Irish Government perspective, tourism is a serious player in town. It is well connected to the other organs of state and there is a good joined-up strategy.
In Northern Ireland, the agenda has moved on immensely, but I see now the gap from not having a Minister, in the context of getting things done and having a clear strategy. We work very well and are doing the best we can. We work with some good people and the industry is in better shape than it has been for many years. There is no question about it: when I compare both jurisdictions—and I do not want to get into a political conversation—having a Minister is critical, particularly for our business when you go abroad. If you want to meet high-level people in large companies, having a Minister of Government really counts. When you are in countries such as China, for example, where the Government really matters, it is even more important.
Q282 Conor McGinn: John, can I ask you the same question but, in addition, ask you where we are with the Economy 2030 consultations that were launched? Tourism was part of that overall industrial strategy in early 2017, when the consultation closed. Has a new tourism strategy been announced? Is it going to be announced? Is the absence of an Executive preventing that, and where do you sit within it?
John McGrillen: I understand that, in two weeks’ time we will be getting evidence from the Department, when I might be better placed to answer that question. We have been heavily involved in working with the Department to draw up a draft tourism strategy. We had one drawn up, which was due to go to public consultation before the Executive collapsed. If you recall, the industrial strategy came out one day and the Executive fell the following day. The logic was that, given tourism is part of the industrial strategy, the tourism strategy would come thereafter.
Conor McGinn: That has not happened.
John McGrillen: That has not happened. In fairness, a lot has moved on in the interim. A lot of research has been done, both by Tourism Ireland and us. The document we have put together now is more honed than we perhaps would have had at that point. I understand from our conversations with the Department, subject to it doing the public interest tests it has to do, that it will put that tourism strategy out into the marketplace hopefully later in the autumn.
Lady Hermon referred to the licensing laws, but there are other pieces of legislation we need to amend to reflect the modern-day tourism economy. We have not been able to move those on either, because we have not had a Minister to whom we could put the recommendations or a legislator to take any changes to legislation through the House. There are a range of impacts from not having a Minister.
Q283 Conor McGinn: When we talk about tourism in Northern Ireland, we tend to focus on cities and landmarks. Jim alluded to this earlier. As part of that strategy, £10 million was allocated to the development of rural tourism. I look at my own home area, South Armagh, and see the incredible things that have been done there over the last decade. Just in the last year there was the refurbishment and reopening of Killeavy Castle, which is magnificent. The Ring of Gullion is an area of outstanding natural beauty. In my own home village of Camlough, this weekend the céilí at the Crossroads festival will take place, which is attracting people into the village. This weekend also, Mayo plays Down in all-Ireland qualifier. Given that is a 7 pm throw-in, I hope people will stay in Newry that evening and enjoy what it has to offer. Laois is playing Derry in Dungiven. I hope again that, given the distance, people will stay there. Have you been working to encourage GAA and sports tourism?
John McGrillen: We have not encouraged the GAA to kick off at 7 pm. I do not think people in Mayo are too happy with that, from what I understand.
Conor McGinn: Armagh is playing Monaghan. It might be a bit of a stretch to get people who are travelling from Monaghan to stay in Armagh.
John McGrillen: In the strategy, we are clear that we want to make sure that all parts of Northern Ireland feel the benefit of tourism. We want to drive greater regionality, so less dependency on Belfast. People think there is a dependency on the Causeway Coast, but it is actually on the Causeway itself. The rest of the coast does not necessarily benefit in the same way. We want to spread that, but also, working in partnership with Niall and the Tourism Ireland team, we want to increase seasonality. The GB market is important for that, because people from GB travel more frequently to the island of Ireland, travel further when they get there and travel all year round. That is an important part of that strategy.
We would very much like to see greater growth beyond the honeypots that we have at the moment. Sustainability is going to become a bigger issue for the traveller, so we have to demonstrate that we are growing tourism in a sustainable way that brings benefits to the communities to which the tourist is coming. We have pressures in places like the Giant’s Causeway, so we want to divert those people to other places, where they will have an experience and can meet, get to feel and understand the local culture and people. That is what people who come to the island of Ireland really want to experience.
Conor McGinn: Thank you, both, very much. I am also obliged to say that the aeroplanes go both ways, and I am keen to encourage people from the island of Ireland to visit Manchester, the north-west of England and my own constituency in St Helens.
Q284 Chair: I have a few questions to draw some threads together. From your experience of talking to visitors—you must do exit survey work and those types of things—do people see themselves as visitors to Ireland as an island or to an island in two parts? There is the political overlay and then the tourism overlay. People would say that they were going on holiday to Spain, not to Catalonia, where there are debates going on between the Madrid Government and the Catalan regional Government. What is your learning on that?
John McGrillen: My view is that it depends where the people are coming from. People coming from GB clearly understand Northern Ireland and see themselves as coming to Belfast or Northern Ireland. People who come from further afield tend to come for an all-Ireland experience, so they want to reach out and examine every part of the island of Ireland, to experience that and experience some of the differences. Quite often people do not differentiate. When asked the question as to what part of the island they are in, quite often they cannot differentiate one from the other.
We look at everything from a consumer perspective. We do not necessarily ask that question. We have never asked the consumer whether they have differentiated. We know from surveys we do at airports that people often do not understand which part they were in. We ask people, though, how they felt about Northern Ireland and whether it lived up to their expectations. The vast majority of people, 95%, say either that it met or that it exceeded their expectations as a tourism destination. For us, that is one of the most important pieces of research we get. To some extent, our challenge is communicating to people how good Northern Ireland actually is.
Niall Gibbons: From my own experience, a very small number of people do both jurisdictions on one trip. People just go on their holidays to have a good time, and only about 5% will cover both jurisdictions in one trip. The majority of people will say, “I went to Ireland on my holidays”, but an increasing number are saying, “But I took in Northern Ireland as part of that trip, by the way, and this is what I experienced”. It is becoming a new part of the narrative in various markets, and I am probably picking that up more than before in North America, compared with other markets. That is part of a story that they read in the newspapers for the wrong reasons, 20 years ago, and now they are visiting for the right reasons.
Q285 Chair: You have mentioned the weather and the question of how to fill your time on a seven-day holiday. In answer to Lady Hermon’s questions, you have mentioned concerns about Brexit and the logistics of travel. What reasons do you hear, in what you readily confess to be a highly competitive market, as to why not? “Why did I not come?”
Niall Gibbons: There are a number of reasons. First, “There was somewhere else that fulfilled my expectations.” There is lots of competition out there. For the island of Ireland, the most common one is, “I cannot think of how I would fill seven or 10 days of holiday”. A lot of people can identify where Dublin is on the map and maybe Belfast, but beyond that it is very hard. We call it a green haze. In our research, we pick up lingering issues of safety and security perceptions in Northern Ireland, particularly in the Great Britain market. Those are legacy issues, but it is improving all the time. It is still a drag factor on the capacity to generate demand. All in all, it is about convincing people that they are going to have a great time and will be able to fill their holiday. Any time that people have come, in exit surveys their expectations have generally been met or exceeded, which is very positive.
Q286 Chair: Hopefully this final question will be a quick one. I entirely take the point you made that you are there to promote the things that exist and encourage people to come. How people get there is really their own concern. Briefly, have you marketed to the airline operators the desirability and capacity to establish and grow international routes into Northern Ireland? Have you proactively marketed that as a business proposition, with the attendant benefits that accrue from it?
Niall Gibbons: The primary responsibility for that rests with airports, but we act in a supportive role to provide any information that they want to encourage airlines to pick those airports.
Q287 Chair: Is that a no?
Niall Gibbons: Is what a no?
Q288 Chair: Have you directly marketed it? While I appreciate it is not part of your core raison d’être, without merely providing advice for airports to make their pitch, have you marketed to the airline operators the opportunity for the re-establishment/establishment of international routes coming into Northern Ireland, to address and/or allay the concerns that you have heard from colleagues around the table that Dublin is the hub and everything else is a spoke?
John McGrillen: My understanding is that colleagues of ours in Invest NI, in conjunction with the Department for the Economy, are involved in that work. They are looking at it from a trade development, not just tourism, point of view. Work of that nature goes on, but the Department, when it is here, is probably best placed to answer that.
Q289 Chair: I am taking your answers as an equivocating no.
Niall Gibbons: We have conversations with airlines all the time, but our primary responsibility is not to go out and market proactively.
Q290 Chair: I take that, Mr Gibbons. As a yes or no answer, have you proactively marketed the idea of routes that come into Northern Ireland to airline operators?
Niall Gibbons: Not proactively, no.
Q291 Ian Paisley: First, Niall, the point that you made about not having a Northern Ireland Administration is very well made and not lost on anyone. The sooner that is sorted out, the better. I have two issues, which I want to know if we can have a commitment from you on, and one question. The question is this: Visit Belfast and Visit Derry made brilliant presentations to this Committee. Everyone was impressed with what they said. Is there more scope for collaboration with those organisations, giving them the opportunity to address some of the gaps that have been identified in the questioning today? Is there a role for that? That was just an open question. John, can you commit to come back to us, as quickly as possible, on the World Rally for 2020?
John McGrillen: Yes.
Ian Paisley: Niall, the Chairman gave you a good opening. Is there space and a possibility, given the criticism that you have heard—and you have probably picked up where the Committee is going with this—for TI to sit down and do a strategic overview, looking at how the Northern Ireland airports can share in this bonanza? If they see they are missing out on something, we need to get them on the page with us. Can you do something to help focus attention on the important issue you addressed, which was APD, and gets us talking about how we manage routes and get some of these airlines to look at Aldergrove and Belfast City as opportunities? Could you give us a commitment that you will do a strategic overview, following this, to see if you can do something specific with the airports?
Niall Gibbons: Those were two things. Visit Belfast and Visit Derry are terrific partners of ours already and I am more than happy to work with them. There are great examples from the Netherlands, Britain and the United States, where we have three big platforms for Visit Belfast. It is great to see them coming out to the marketplace. More of that will hopefully continue. On air access, we are more than happy to do whatever we can in strategic support—100%, absolutely.
John McGrillen: We also work extremely closely with Visit Belfast and Visit Derry. On the back of that, there is a delegation of 300 Dutch tour operators coming to Northern Ireland later this year, as a result of the work that has been done. We are funding that and delivering it in partnership with Visit Belfast. Similarly, we work closely with Visit Derry. I think the working relationships across Tourism Ireland, Tourism Northern Ireland, Visit Belfast, Visit Derry and a number of other organisations that are promoting their areas have never been stronger.
Q292 Kate Hoey: The perception is still that there is a Dublin Airport bias, perhaps understandably in many ways, but it is true that you have a joint reporting structure to the Department of Transport, and that you pledge to promote Dublin Airport as a gateway to the entire island of Ireland, to communicate how easy it is to access Northern Ireland from Dublin Airport and to “Lobby for expediting the second runway and new infrastructure at Dublin Airport”. Do you understand that people in Northern Ireland feel there is something not quite there about the promotion of Belfast Airport? I also point out that the chief executive of Belfast Airport is not representing the airport on your board. I expect he will read this and I am sure he will have some views on whether he has ever raised any of these issues privately with you.
Niall Gibbons: I accept that point. I can see where perceptions come from. I have to say that I have been with Tourism Ireland for 18 years, and it is important to have engagement from everybody across the island of Ireland. I have to make the point that, at times, people have been half-hearted in their commitment to work with us. I am not speaking about anybody in particular; it is a broad constituency. We have a colossal platform abroad that can be of benefit to everybody across the island of Ireland, which is at their disposal. That is a really important point to make.
Secondly, there is no bias for Dublin. The bottom line is that we have aggressive targets to increase tourism by 2025 and onwards to 2030, which will necessitate the building of a second runway, which is already under way. If we are sitting here in five or 10 years’ time, what will the picture look like? We are in a situation where €3 billion has been invested by daa in Dublin Airport, not just on the runway but on expansion in general. The case on airport passenger duty has been made for years, and Ryanair shared its correspondence with me. It is all there. If decisions are not made on those big policy platforms, we will be having the same conversations in 10 years’ time. There are those barriers there. Take the Stansted-Belfast flight, for example; it has £26 of tax. Dublin-Berlin has zero. That is the competitive platform we are all in. Those policy issues are not related to Dublin Airport. They are bigger platforms. I cannot get into the political world, but those are the realities of the world we deal in.
John McGrillen: It is critical from our perspective that people understand that, if they are flying into Dublin, they can get to Belfast in 90 minutes. There are a vast number of people, 20 million, landing in Dublin. Some of those will go through, but 60 million land on the island of Ireland. We want as many of those as possible to come to Northern Ireland and stay as long as they can when they are there.
Q293 Kate Hoey: If they flew directly to Belfast, they would be there already. The point is that, even if air passenger duty were taken off, which we all want, those airports would still need promotion from Tourism Ireland.
John McGrillen: I agree.
Chair: Gentlemen, can I thank you for your attendance? Thank you for the detail and frankness with which you have answered colleagues’ questions. I thank colleagues for their attendance, and our Clerks for sustaining us and organising this morning’s session. Thank you very much indeed for coming.