Tourism Ireland to ‘weigh’ benefits of further growth with environmental damage

Tourism Ireland says the chase for growth in visitor numbers from far-flung markets such as Asia needs to be weighed against damage to the environment and the ability of the country to cope.

Alice Mansergh, the organisation’s new chief executive, says “important decisions” are being made about how to target new business in the future from countries such as China and Japan.

She says Tourism Ireland, the cross-Border body that markets both the Republic and the North abroad, will no longer run broad consumer campaigns targeting travellers in many faraway emerging markets. Instead, it will work mostly with tour operators to bring in only high-spending tourists.

“We have a calculation around revenue per carbon footprint,” said Ms Mansergh. “If we’re going to bring someone from the other side of the world, we’re going to make sure we target [those who are] valued-added, and [not those] coming in and out, leaving a carbon footprint, but without bringing value.”

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Despite capacity constraints at Dublin Airport and in the accommodation sector, she said there is “still room for growth” in Irish tourism. “But it needs to be responsible growth.”

Former Google executive Ms Mansergh, the daughter of former government minister Martin Mansergh, took the reins at Tourism Ireland in mid-September, after her predecessor Niall Gibbons left for Saudi Arabia. She also served five years as a director of Fáilte Ireland, the other State tourism agency that handles operational matters around the industry at home.

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She spoke to The Irish Times in London this week at an Irish embassy event for the tourism industry. Along with about 75 Irish tourism businesses, Tourism Ireland is taking part in the World Travel Market, the world’s largest tourism trade fair which is taking place at the sprawling Excel venue in East London.

“There is an intersecting set of decisions within tourism [around] how you weigh up growing the value of tourism and how you weigh up sustainability at the same time,” she said.

Ms Mansergh said tourism authorities would have to “weigh up” new tourism business from emerging markets such as Asia versus the carbon footprint it generates.

“In the past, the industry thought about growth only in terms of the volume of visitors and more, more more. But the thinking has shifted now to value. Growth needs to be responsibly managed.”

The number of overseas visitors to the island Ireland peaked at about 11.3 million in 2019, just before the pandemic, according to Tourism Ireland. Post-pandemic air capacity in to Ireland has recovered beyond 2019 levels. Comparisons with previous year’s visitor numbers are sketchy, however, as the way they are measured by the Central Statistics Office has changed.

[ Tourism sector still underperforming pre-Covid levels, says CSO ]

Ms Mansergh said the organisation would expand its marketing of the island Ireland in traditional markets such as Britain. In future, she suggested, there would be a greater focus on out-of-season events such as Ireland’s history as the birthplace of Halloween, which she hoped would become as popular with visitors as Irish heritage around St Patrick’s Day.

She also said that her cross-Border organisation’s engagement with tourism issues in the North takes “a little bit more navigating” with the absence of a devolved government and assembly due to political strife. But she said the North’s civil servants had stepped into the breach.