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| So many holiday choices. |
It was great to note that Minister Donohoe spent the whole
day in Waterford City and County seeing at firsthand our tourism offering and
also I am sure that he took the opportunity to meet and greet many businesses
involved in his ministerial portfolio.
We met in the Granville Hotel with industry representatives
and members of the Council Executive.
As we are all aware Ireland’s Ancient East project was muted
quite some time ago (possible as long ago as two years) and is in every single
way the response to the highly successful Wild Atlantic Way project launched a
number of years ago. The Wild Atlantic Way is literally pulling hundreds of
thousands of tourists to the West and the unfortunate consequence of this is
that less and less International tourists are coming to the Waterford and the
South East. The Wild Atlantic Way has been a massively successful project and
there can be absolutely no doubt that the strength of this new west coast brand
will be nearly impossible to compete with and therefore we are yet again
playing catch up to the rest of Ireland Inc.
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| Ireland's Ancient East. |
The simple truth is that Waterford and the South East get
the smallest amount of International tourist and more alarmingly we get a very
insignificant amount of the available overseas tourism spend. And it is this
very small percentage of spend that we should all be very concerned about. It
is Tourism Ireland that promotes all things Irish in terms of this Emerald Isle
as a destination. They really are only concerned with visiting numbers and the reality
is that it makes no difference if 7 million tourists come to just one place as
long as that place is in Ireland somewhere. So as a destination attractor
Ireland’s Ancient East will have to be very special indeed if we are to get an
ever increasing larger slice of the International tourism pie.
Despite all the efforts over the last number of years
Waterford is still seen as a “very quick visit” for International tourists and
as a results many spend literally a couple of hours, and a couple of Euro, in
Waterford Crystal and the Viking Triangle and then hop back on to a tour bus
and then it is off to Kilkenny or off down to the West of Ireland.
This of course is not what we want and the Ireland’s Ancient
East project has to go an awful long way go to remedy this leakage of tourists
and their much needed injection of Euro into our local economy. We are almost
back to the same old scenario when our tourist numbers visited Kilbarry, bypassing
the City altogether, and stayed two hours then it was off down the Cork Road
and into the West.
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| The Wild Atlantic Way. |
The fact the politicians from within Fine Gael cannot agree on
whether Waterford should have its own tourism offering as part of Ireland’s
Ancient East or be part of the wider Wild Atlantic Way does give cause for
concern when you consider just how far behind we are in terms of our offering. On
the day the Minister Donohoe was in Waterford his party colleague, Mr Deasy TD,
was on WLR FM calling for Waterford Council to once again push for inclusion in
the Wild Atlantic way. I personally believe that we have to have our own unique
offering and from my very limited knowledge of all things Wild and Atlantic I
do not believe we are in fact on the Atlantic at all, and we are on the Celtic
Sea (I think) and as such we need our own unique selling point as part of a
wider tourism offering!
Interesting to note that Cork is hedging its bets and is on both maps of the Wild Atlantic Way and Ireland's Ancient East - you have got to hand it to them!
Minister Donohoe stated that he wished to see 600,000
additional tourists come to the South East by 2020, but that timescale is of
course far too late or Waterford City and the wider South East region and this
was pointed out to the Minister during the workshop. Quite simply need those
600,000 additional tourist now and next year and not 4 or 5 years away. Like our
retail sector we need to see increased numbers coming immediately to the City
and County, and all manner of hills and mountains need to be moved to achieve
this. I often wonder if it is only me that can see the need for urgency and rapid
implementation of projects that will bring financial security to the City and I
do wonder if other see the City and County through a pair of optically
challenge set of rose tinted glasses.
I pointed out to the Minister that communicating the
messaging of the project is key and vital to its success, and that all
front-line responders needed to be aware of the project and its objectives so
that tourist would benefit from the correct information. Unfortunately, as is
so often the case, unless the appropriate senior civil servants and their
departments get behind the project it is doomed to be moving along at a snail’s
pace when we require the implementation speed of a Peregrine falcon!
When you consider that most tour operators are already
selling 18 to 24 months ahead we are realistically taking about 2017 at the very
earliest before we can even look at persuading these tour operators to come and
consider Ireland’s Ancient East. And we will then have try to persuade these
operators to leave their traditional markets and bear in mind that these existing
markets will be fighting tooth and nail to keep their existing supply chain and
that tourism income. It really will be an monumental uphill struggle.
The success of Ireland’s Ancient East project will
ultimately be down to buy-in from all sectors concerned within the tourism
industry and history tells us, which we never seems to learn from, that for such
a project to work we need to see real on-the-ground-work being down and
figuratively speaking we need to see people prepared to “wear out their shoe
leather”.
Failure to get the industry informed and get the industry
enthused will deliver nothing. It is all very well communicating this message
internally and within Government Departments but getting the message out to a
wider stakeholder group is a whole different proposition.
And we can see similar mistakes with the opportunities
around the Purple Flag in Waterford, where there has been a communication void
in terms of message reinforcement. Yes, we need better stakeholder buy-in but
the whole message dissemination around the Purple Flag in Waterford leaves one
wondering if it could not have been done better.
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| Alchemists workshop. |
So, the Ireland’s Ancient East project has the potential to
deliver, but only if Minister Donohoe is prepared to rattle a few cages, stand
on a few toes and move the year 2020 to 2017.
Though I am not sure alchemy is in his portfolio!
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