The chief executive of Queens Moat Houses, the tenth largest hotel group in the UK, Mr Andrew Coppel, does not have a lot of spare time on his hands. In the last eight years he has been busy steering the debt-ridden hotel group towards financial stability, and prior to the outbreak of the foot-and-mouth crisis in the UK, he believed he was on course.

The subsequent downturn in the tourism sector, coupled with the general economic slowdown, has posed new challenges for Mr Coppel, but he is not one to be disheartened. Despite a recent profits warning from Queens Moat House, he believes expansion may be on the horizon and he sees new opportunities to grow the group, which currently has 92 hotels in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

If that was not enough to contend with, he then received a phone call that will safely ensure that his life does not get any less frantic - at least for the next three years.

The caller was someone he knew from Northern Ireland and he was ringing to inquire if Mr Coppel would be interested in a non-executive job that would be extremely demanding, but very rewarding, although not in the financial sense.

The caller was Mr Martin McAleese, husband of President Mary McAleese, and the job was chairman of Tourism Ireland. The call was made on behalf of Mr Seamus Mallon, deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, who subsequently made the appointment.

"I decided to accept the role because it looked to me to be a challenging role. In a very modest way I also wanted to be able to give a little bit back, in terms of my education in Ireland, to get involved in what is clearly an important part of the Good Friday Agreement," Mr Coppel said.

He left Northern Ireland as a young law graduate aged 27 years at the height of the Troubles, adamant that he would retain strong links with his home town of Belfast.

His career has taken him from senior positions at Morgan Grenfell to chief executive of Tilney to Ratners, where he was group finance director.

A chartered accountant, he was appointed chief executive of Queen Moat Houses in 1993, where he says his personal mission statement is to "deliver what people want". He intends to apply the same mission statement to his new role as chairman of Tourism Ireland.

He is confident that the company has the support mechanism in place to ensure it can achieve its objectives of selling Northern Ireland and the Republic as a holiday destination.

Mr Coppel says it is starting off with a clean sheet of paper; it has a new board and a new management team, which will bring together a large number of people, around 140, from the existing tourist boards.

He said Tourism Ireland would capitalise on the boards' work to date.

"Basically Ireland should be able to sell itself as an island. The issue is that it is a very competitive environment in which we are trying to attract increasing numbers of tourists and increasing tourism revenues. He said it was important to emphasise that Tourism Ireland would not be taking the work of Bord Failte or the Northern Ireland Tourist Board.

"Our responsibility as Tourism Ireland is destination marketing, which is the marketing of the island of Ireland.

"We will be acting on behalf of the tourist boards in marketing the products which they develop," Mr Coppel said.

Tourism Ireland plans to provide an information/query service but has dismissed recent suggestions that it would establish its own call centre for reservations.

Mr Coppel does not believe there are any particular hurdles to overcome in the new all-Ireland approach to promoting tourism, particularly in relation to issues such as currency differentials on both sides of the border.

"The key to being successful is to meet the needs of the customers. My sales and marketing knowledge clearly has increased with my involvement in the hotel industry and the issues remain the same whether you are trying to attract guests into hotel rooms or trying to attract people to destinations," he added.

According to Mr Coppel, the bottom line is that if visitors have a great time and enjoy themselves they will come back. One way of measuring the success of the new body will be by the increase in the number of tourists it attracts to the island.

"Last year 1.3 million tourists came to the North while 6.3 million came to the south, so you are talking about a total of 7.6 million visitors.

"One of the real areas of opportunity lies in the continental European market - less than 25 per cent of the visitors to the island in 1999 came from continental Europe and those people are virtually on our doorstep," he said.

He wants to grow tourism figures over the next five years to 10 million people per annum and he wants revenues to increase to £5 billion (#6.3 billion).

"We know that people who wish to take holidays have a huge market from which to choose and it is vital that we emphasise the attractions of Ireland in a persuasive manner which will tempt them to come and holiday on the island and travel around the island.

"We have also got to have the facilities to attract people and I am not just talking about golf courses. There has to be casual dining outlets in National Trust locations.

"The image of Ireland is also important and we need to have a blend of the traditional as well as the modern. Ireland as an island has changed over the last 15 years and the emphasis has got to be not on just attracting older people but also younger people with their families," he said.

Mr Coppel is more than familiar with issues particular to the North and how these may affect how this part of the island is promoted as a holiday destination.

"The problems that Northern Ireland has encountered are well documented and we hope and pray that the peace process will continue and that there will be a lasting peace. That would clearly improve the backdrop against which one wishes to attract more tourists to the North.

"We are not simply focusing on the month of July - we want to attract visitors to the island of Ireland all year round. "They don't come to Ireland for the weather, so whether it is July or February we want to be able to offer the same facilities," Mr Coppel said.