Overview of North/South and cross-border co-operation in TOURISM

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The tourism industry is never far from the news. Sometimes it is the opportunities provided by large events such as the St. Patrick’s festival, the Ryder Cup golf tournament, the Rally Ireland stage of the World Rally Championship or new arrangements such as the ‘Open Skies’ arrangements. Alternatively, it is the threats to tourist numbers such as foot-and-mouth, terrorism or rising oil prices. Generally it is because tourism remains a crucial contributor to the economies, North and South, and particularly to local economies.

The figures bear out this importance. In 2006 tourism generated over €4 billion in revenue and employed over 250,000 people North and South. Numbers of tourists visiting the island are also on the increase to 8.8 million in 2006, an 8% increase on 2005 figures (Tourism Ireland, 2005). This equates to over four times as many tourists visiting the island in 2005 compared to 1980. The North’s share of these figures has been steadily rising from 15% in 2001 to 21% in 2005.

Despite these figures there is room for improvement. There are new challenges to contend with such as shorter lengths of stay, tougher international competition and pressures on the island’s relative competitive positioning¹. Northern Ireland’s share of tourists may have increased but there remains a belief that the industry has room for further growth and income generation. Also, tourism can be a boon for local areas and niche attractions (such as culture or food) as well as activity tourism (walking, surfing, etc.) are believed to be ways to benefit rural parts of the island in particular.

Tourism is one of the key sectors for North/South and cross-border co-operation. On Border Ireland² activities in the tourism sector have been allocated to one of five areas:

1. Infrastructure – This covers the often large-scale or flagship capital building projects for tourist attractions, accommodation or computer facilities. These range from improvements to golf courses in the border region to the establishment of the central all-island booking system, GULLIVER.
2. Marketing – This includes both campaigns that can either be short or long-term and aimed at domestic or overseas markets as well as support for one-off events (from angling competitions to music festivals).
3. Training – This covers professional training in all parts of the industry from catering through to the use of IT in tourism.
4. Rural tourism – This includes initiatives which have been specifically aimed at supporting the industry in rural areas such as South Armagh or the Sliabh Beagh region.
5. Cross-sectoral – Some activities, such as the running of the North/South body, Tourism Ireland, or tourism strategies for the East Border region have no specific area and have been defined as general activities.

NUMBER AND TYPES OF ACTIVITIES

Between 1985 and 2005³ there have been 388 activities which were funded to support cross-border co-operation in tourism or were intergovernmental initiatives. Chart 1 shows how these 388 are divided into the five areas noted above. The dominance of marketing and infrastructural development is hardly surprising within this sector, although the importance of training initiatives (with over 30 activities or 8 per cent of the whole) should be noted. Chart 2 shows (on an aggregated county basis) where cross-border tourism activities actually take place with the darker colours indicating the higher levels of such activity in the North-West region.

Chart 1: Types of tourism cross-border activities, 1985-2005	Chart 2: The distribution of tourism activities4

ORGANISATIONS

The tourism sector has 86 organisations or businesses which have been directly involved in cross-border co-operation at some level. These can be divided into three types:

1. Businesses – such as hotels, caravan parks or attractions (like golf clubs, etc.).
2. Statutory bodies – such as regional tourism organisations or Tourism Ireland.
3. Representative bodies – such as those representing hoteliers or the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland.

In addition to these 86 organisations are the local authorities who have been co-operating in this sector since the 1980s with the example of the North West Passage which was established as a marketing brand for the North West back in 1982 and involved councils from Roscommon to Omagh to Donegal.

As with most areas of North/South or cross-border co-operation many of the 86 organisations have been involved in one-off initiatives associated with either EU Peace or EU INTERREG funding. However, there are the few which have a longstanding involvement going back to the 1980s. In the main these are statutory organisations such as Fáilte Ireland which was working with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board on IT and marketing projects back in the late 1980s. The Tourism Training Trust, the sector’s training body in the North, has also been involved in cross-border work since the 1980s supported by funding from the International Fund for Ireland.

CHANGES OVER TIME?

Of the 388 activities noted above almost 340 or 87 per cent were completed before 2000. Large numbers of these were small-scale improvements to tourist accommodation or marketing of a new attraction or event on one or other side of the border. Many of these pre-2000 activities were within the twelve county region which received Peace, International Fund for Ireland or INTERREG funding.

The key change for tourism co-operation on the island of Ireland came in 1999-2000 with the creation of Waterways Ireland and Tourism Ireland. The first was set up to maintain and restore the system of inland waterways on the island which are now a key tourism offering for recreational activity. The remit of the body included the management of waterways such as the flagship cross-border Shannon/Erne Waterway as well as the potential re-opening of the Ulster Canal. This water-based tourism also forms part of the work of another North/South body, the Loughs Agency with its responsibility for Carlingford Lough and Lough Foyle.

The other major change is associated with the establishment of Tourism Ireland as the single organisation promoting the island of Ireland in overseas markets. With a budget which has risen steadily (to over €70 million in 2005) Tourism Ireland now almost (96%) matches the combined annual budget of all of the North/South Implementation Bodies. Joined with the Waterways Ireland budget (over 10% of the North/South bodies budget itself) these figures alone are a striking example of the importance placed on tourism in North/South co-operation.

Beyond the North/South bodies there have been another 40 or so activities funded by EU or other programmes since 2000. The earlier presence of back-to-back projects has been replaced by more integrated cross-border initiatives. However, the questions surrounding the sustainability of these initiatives and their wider incorporation into the all-island approach of Tourism Ireland remain open ones.

RESEARCH AND STRATEGY

The mapping study compiled by the Centre for Cross Border Studies in 2000 noted that research into tourism was greatly under-resourced for such an important industry. Much of the research since then has continued to focus on statistics and market intelligence for each of the three tourism bodies. Academic research continues in dedicated centres in the University of Limerick, the University of Ulster and Dublin Institute of Technology. Two all-island research conferences have been held in 2005 and 2006 and research funding has come on stream in 2006 for postgraduate and postdoctoral fellowships funded by Fáilte Ireland.

Strategy continues to work at three levels. International marketing strategies are the domain of Tourism Ireland. At the jurisdictional level domestic tourism development is the province of Fáilte Ireland and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, though regional tourism bodies and local authorities continue to have a local strategic role. However, a recent challenging critique(Henderson J and Teague P, 2006) of North-South tourism co-operation, which is widely perceived as one of the success stories of the 1998 Belfast/ Good Friday Agreement, concludes that “the emergence of a genuine all-island approach to tourism remains some way off”.

SUCCESSFUL CROSS-BORDER APPROACHES?

Despite the findings of research about policy development it is clear opportunities for North/South and cross-border co-operation in tourism have been taken at island-wide, regional and local levels in recent years. Back in 1997 the Northern Ireland Economic Council called on the governments to move beyond joint marketing only to tackle both supply and demand barriers to the expansion of tourist numbers.

In the area of infrastructure the cross-border flagship remains the Shannon/Erne Waterway which reopened in 1994 after investment of £30 million (including over £12 million of International Fund for Ireland and EU INTERREG I funding). This has had the benefit of bringing large numbers of tourists to this border corridor of counties Cavan, Fermanagh and Leitrim as well as generating new cross-border marketing and improvement projects along the corridor. One of the more recent examples is the cross-border and cross-community Erne Lakelands Tourism group which received INTERREG IIIA funding (€139,000) in 2003 to develop a network of accommodation-activity providers and community groups to promote and develop tourism in the area.

Marketing and infrastructure has gone together in other cross-border regions mostly supported by the INTERREG IIIA programme. In the North West the ‘Atlantic Drift’ initiative has been run by Donegal County and Limavady Borough Councils to market the ferry connecting Magilligan and Greencastle and to develop a partnership involving the ferry company, Údarás na Gaeltachta and North West Tourism as a route towards sustaining the service.

The regional approach is also currently being adopted for the Bréifne region (which takes in counties Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Leitrim and Roscommon and has received Peace II funding) where a geological, ecological, cultural and heritage ‘brand’ is being developed to attract tourists to the region. ‘Destination North West’ and the two projects in the Carlingford Lough area similarly are local authority-led cross-border projects which combine a regional focus, a partnership approach (involving other non-government bodies) and an emphasis both on improvements to signage or facilities as well as marketing campaigns. These examples are all well-funded (ranging from €400,000 to €1.6 million) and presumably the hope is that they will continue as part of ongoing local authority work.

The hugely successful Greenbox, covering counties Fermanagh, Leitrim, West Cavan, North Sligo, South Donegal and North West Monaghan, is emerging as Irelands’ first genuine ecotourism destination with a set of standards based on sound environmental practices highlighting all that the region and its people has to offer. In the absence of any government policy in this area Greenbox is developing policy from the ground up.

The North/South and cross-border approaches currently being used appear to favour a mix of the institutional (such as Tourism Ireland), the regional focus (like ‘Atlantic Drift’) and the use of partnership to involve both tourism providers and marketing bodies. All of these cross-border approaches might be brought together in the regeneration of the Ulster Canal which can act as a flagship to rival the earlier Shannon/Erne Waterway. Despite the strong case being put forward by its supporters and the Southern National Development Plan, the funding for the Ulster Canal has yet to be identified.

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1. Irish Times article 16 February 2007 where the Irish Minister for Tourism John O’Donoghue claimed a tourism ‘landmark’
2. The Border Ireland website (www.borderireland.info) provides free access to a searchable database of all North-South and cross-border activities on the island of Ireland since the mid-1980s.
3. In 2006 an estimated 42 cross-border tourism activities were funded and these are currently being added to the Border Ireland system.
4. The Centre is working in partnership with its ICLRD colleagues to develop an INTERREG-funded spatial mapping application which will see Border Ireland information represented visually.FURTHER READING

• Tourism Ireland 2005, Market Intelligence Reports
• Centre for Cross Border Studies, 2000 North/South co-operation on tourism: A mapping study
• Henderson J and Teague P, 2006 The Belfast Agreement and Economic Co-operation in the Tourism Industry