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Minster Catherine Martin TD announces strategic partnership between SEAI and Fáilte Ireland to support decarbonisation of tourism businesses in Ireland.
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New Climate Action Programme for tourism industry.
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2024 will see 8 new tourism capital projects open across the country focusing on leveraging Ireland’s heritage, history, and natural landscape.
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Latest Fáilte Ireland research shows that 44% of tourism businesses are expecting more visitors in 2024 but rising operational costs and accommodation capacity constraints continue to be a concern.
“2024 presents a lot of opportunities for the sustainable development of the tourism industry, although the challenges of costs, competitiveness and accommodation capacity continue to have a significant impact. Fáilte Ireland remains committed to supporting tourism businesses to manage these challenges as well as focusing on the biggest long-term challenge for us all - climate change. We can see very clear and significant opportunities to decarbonise tourism businesses across Ireland, and this will be a key focus for us in the year ahead.”
Paul Kelly, Fáilte Ireland CEO
[21 Feb 2024] Fáilte Ireland has unveiled its ambitious plans to drive sustainable tourism development across Ireland and support the decarbonisation of tourism businesses at its annual industry briefing today. The National Tourism Development Authority unveiled its 2024 plans at a special virtual event for the tourism industry, opened by Minister for Tourism Catherine Martin TD, and watched by over 1,500 tourism operators, providers, and employers from across the sector.
Central to the plans is a new Climate Action Programme, developed in consultation with tourism businesses, which includes the appointment of a dedicated advisor to businesses to help navigate every step of the climate action journey.
To accelerate the decarbonisation of the tourism sector in line with national carbon emissions reduction targets, Minister for Tourism Catherine Martin announced that Fáilte Ireland has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). This partnership will ensure tourism businesses can easily access the financial supports available to reduce carbon emissions, increase energy efficiency and adopt renewable technologies.
The National Tourism Development Authority will also celebrate the 10th anniversary of its first regional tourism brand the Wild Atlantic Way in 2024. Every county in the Republic of Ireland is now covered by a Fáilte Ireland regional tourism brand – Wild Atlantic Way, Dublin, Ireland’s Ancient East and Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands, which provide a blueprint for Fáilte Ireland’s ongoing destination development.
To continue to motivate visitors to take a domestic break in Ireland and encourage overseas visitors to choose Ireland as a destination, Fáilte Ireland updated the industry on its future potential pipeline of up to 150 new or upgraded tourism projects that may be developed across its four regional brands. Eight of these new visitor attractions and experiences are due to open in 2024 including Queen Maeve Square in Co. Sligo, a new water sports facility in Curracloe, Co. Wexford, Dublin Castle Records Tower in Dublin city centre and Connaught Harbour in Portumna, Co. Galway.
As part of the virtual session, Fáilte Ireland presented its latest research on the tourism industry’s expectations for 2024. Headline findings showed that most tourism businesses are predicting 2024 will be better than 2023, with 44% of respondents expecting an increase in visitors this year and 21% expecting fewer visitors.
However, businesses are still reporting concerns about rising operational costs in 2024 with half of businesses saying the minimum wage increase will have a ‘significant’ impact on their payroll costs. The ongoing capacity constraints is also noted as a worry for 2024.
Minister for Tourism, Catherine Martin TD also announced today that Fáilte Ireland will administer a new business support grant specifically for Activity and Attraction businesses in areas who have been significantly affected by this displacement of registered tourism accommodation stock. Details of this scheme will be announced on 4th March by Fáilte Ireland.
Speaking at the event, Minister Martin said “Driving sustainable development in the tourism sector is more important than ever, and the Government of Ireland and Fáilte Ireland are committed to delivering on our collective sustainable development goals. The new partnership between Fáilte Ireland and SEAI will provide a framework for decarbonising tourism businesses, and I am continuing to progress the development of a new national tourism policy framework that will seek to mainstream sustainability. Tourism is a key economic driver in cities, towns and villages across Ireland and I look forward to supporting Fáilte Ireland over the coming year as it implements its workplans to support sustainable tourism development nationwide.”
Paul Kelly, CEO of Fáilte Ireland said: “2024 presents a lot of opportunities for the sustainable development of the tourism industry and today we are energised and optimistic as we announce our ambitious plans for the year ahead. We are acutely aware of the impact that costs, competitiveness, and capacity constraints continue to have on the tourism sector and Fáilte Ireland remains committed to supporting tourism businesses to manage these challenges, while also focusing on the biggest long-term challenge for us all - climate change. We can see very clear and significant opportunities to decarbonise tourism businesses across Ireland, and this will be a key focus for us in the year ahead. We are pleased today to officially enter into a partnership with the SEAI to ensure seamless working between the agencies and our new industry-leading Climate Action Programme will directly support individual tourism businesses to tackle their carbon footprint and in doing so, support the carbon targets set out by Government”.
Commenting on the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations, CEO of SEAI William Walsh said:
“SEAI and Fáilte Ireland play an important role in supporting the decarbonisation of the tourism industry in Ireland. This new Memorandum of Understanding will help SEAI and Fáilte Ireland raise awareness of supports that are available to enable the tourism sector to deliver national climate action targets, reduce carbon emissions and replace fossil fuels systems across all activities.”
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Fáilte Ireland Priorities for 2024:
Climate Action Programme and SEAI partnership
Fáilte Ireland’s new comprehensive Climate Action Programme has been developed in consultation with the tourism industry to help businesses navigate every step of the climate action journey including:
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Initial evaluation and benchmarking
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Identification of development areas
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Target prioritisation to deliver greatest impact
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Capability audit of team to address development needs
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Review access to available funding
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Ongoing review, monitoring and refinement
The programme will also see participating businesses assigned a dedicated Climate Action advisor. Businesses can find out more at: www.failteIreland.ie/climateactionprogramme
To accelerate the decarbonisation of the tourism sector in line with national carbon emissions reduction targets, Fáilte Ireland has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).
This partnership will ensure tourism businesses can easily access the financial supports available to reduce carbon emissions, increase energy efficiency and adopt renewable technologies.
To help tourism businesses showcase their commitment to sustainability, Fáilte Ireland in partnership with Tourism Ireland and Tourism Northern Ireland has developed a new All-Island Sustainability Assurance Programme. The scheme will offer businesses a badge that can be displayed on marketing and promotional materials to validate their sustainability credentials for customers.
Sustainable Destination Development
Fáilte Ireland’s ambition is to develop Ireland as one of the most sustainable tourism destinations in Europe. To drive this ambition, it is seeking to achieve a national annual average revenue growth rate of 5.6% and will focus on developing regions and off-peak months growing revenue faster than the national annual average. Focusing on ensuring Regionality and Seasonality across the tourism sector will prioritise revenue over volume, making sure the revenue is spread more evenly throughout the year.
Fáilte Ireland’s four Regional Tourism Development Strategies provide a 10-year vision and a five-year action plan for development in each region (the Wild Atlantic Way, Ireland’s Ancient East, Dublin and Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands) and provide the blueprint for sustainable tourism development in the regions ensuring our stakeholders and partners can work together towards a shared vision.
They identify what needs to be done to unlock the commercial potential of each region, while protecting the environment, enhancing the lives of local communities and serving the needs and expectations of our visitors.
To support the delivery of the Regional Tourism Development Strategies, Fáilte Ireland is co-creating 34 Destination & Experience Development Plans with shared vision for localities being agreed by all stakeholders – 24 of these plans are currently active. As part of the DEDPs, there are over 1,550 development actions and plans currently underway across the four regional experience brands – Wild Atlantic Way, Dublin, Ireland’s Ancient East and Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands, and Fáilte Ireland is working closely with over 1000 industry stakeholders to progress these actions. These plans involve community engagement and are subject to strategic environmental assessment, and they address the local challenges and opportunities that are prioritised by all stakeholders.
Product Development
To continue to build the appeal of destinations across Ireland for both domestic and international visitors, Fáilte Ireland will support the continued development and delivery of a potential product development of 150 exceptional visitor experiences and attractions.
In 2024, eight new capital investment projects will open:
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Connaught Harbour, Portumna, Galway, Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands
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Dublin Castle Records Tower, Dublin city, Dublin
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Queen Maeve Square and Garavogue River Walk, Sligo, Wild Atlantic Way
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Dunbrody Famine Ship, New Ross, Wexford, Ireland’s Ancient East
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Kilkenny city - Urban Animation, Ireland’s Ancient East
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Outdoor Sports Facility, Curracloe, Co. Wexford, Ireland’s Ancient East
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Mountain Trail Biking - overall trail network of 191km nationally
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Wexford, New Ross and Waterford Blueway, Ireland’s Ancient East
Fáilte Ireland has also supported 48 strategically funded festivals and a further 221 regional funded festivals right across the county for 2024.
Driving Demand
In 2024, Fáilte Ireland will continue to motivate key target audiences to choose Ireland as the destination that will best meet their holiday needs. To do this it will focus on:
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Increasing the appeal and relevancy of destinations in Ireland among key target audiences domestically through its Keep Discovering domestic marketing campaign.
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Work in partnership with Tourism Ireland to drive the appeal of Ireland internationally and increase the average spend per day and length of stay overseas visitors.
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Host over 1,000 overseas media and buyers this year who will showcase all that Ireland has to offer to key international audiences. Fáilte Ireland will also leverage its support of key events such as the Men’s Irish Open, Ladies’ Irish Open and Georgia Tech vrs Florida State University American College Football to highlight Ireland as a must-visit destination overseas.
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Encourage consumers to book a trip by promoting festivals, events, occasions, and other great reasons to travel.
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Continue to provide industry with easy-to-use best practice tools through sales and marketing supports.
Fáilte Ireland is also working with the Department of Tourism and Tourism Ireland on a new business events strategy to secure high value business delegates.
Business Supports
In the latest Fáilte Ireland Tourism Barometer, tourism business noted cost pressures as the key concern for the year ahead. In 2024, Fáilte Ireland will enhance its strategic supports under a new business resilience framework, which will provide a tailored package of supports to businesses focused on building commercial and financial resilience.
Fáilte Ireland’s LearniFI platform will continue to build on the extensive range of self-service training and resources to allow tourism professionals and staff teams to take greater ownership for their career progression and professional skills development while supporting HR, people managers and team leaders in the provision of tools and capability supports to assist new staff induction and enhance on-the-job training.
The Digital that Delivers programme is a ground-breaking initiative from Fáilte Ireland, designed to power digital transformation for visitor attractions, activity providers and day tours over a two-year programme. This programme supports businesses to showcase their product in front of more domestic and international customers, grow online sales, and develop digital skills. Businesses on this programme will become more promotable, searchable, and ultimately bookable online.
There are currently almost 500 tourism businesses active in Digital That Delivers programme and €9.7m has been allocated in grant funding. In 2024, Fáilte Ireland will launch a Digital that Delivers Graduate Programme to provide ongoing digital advice and supports to businesses completing the programme.
This year, Fáilte Ireland’s newly established Inclusion team will be focused on gaining insights and data on where Ireland is as an inclusive destination and identifying best practice to share. The National Tourism Development Authority is developing a number of supports to build capability and understanding in tourism teams so they can deliver that inclusive experience.
Tourism Careers:
In 2024, Fáilte Ireland will build upon the wide-ranging tourism careers strategy established in 2023, with particular focus on:
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Driving better employment practices to build appealing and rewarding workplaces. This will be driven by the continued development and roll out of the Employer Excellence Programme.
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Building the future pipeline of talent: Driving awareness and consideration of careers in the industry amongst the next generation of tourism via the TY Work Placement Portal and programmes of direct engagement with students and their key influencers such as parents and guidance counsellors.
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Supporting the industry to recruit and retain most in demand roles, particularly key ‘gatekeeper roles’ that stimulate the creation of other jobs such as managers and chefs
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Driving a culture of professional development and progression through best in class learning management system which will support businesses to deliver high quality induction programmes, upskill their staff to help drive business performance and support employees to develop and progress their career.
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