Summary

Ireland's attraction stock is firmly based in the country's heritage and cultural product. There are no significant leisure or theme parks and even the country-park-type attractions are based on historic houses or parklands. There have been some innovative new products emerging in Dublin and Waterford in the past three years.

Over the last 15 years the Republic of Ireland (RoI) has had great success in achieving growth in tourism. This growth has been achieved through sustained investment, from the public and private sectors. One of the main areas for investment has been visitor attractions and Bord Failte has successfully achieved its aim of improving the range and quality of attraction within the country.

The story in Northern Ireland (NI) is somewhat different, suffering from political instability, tourism numbers have remained somewhat low and stagnant. However, considerable investment has been made already in the tourism infrastructure, with a new terminal at Belfast City Airport and an assortment of new attractions, particularly in Belfast with the £33 million Waterfront Hall and £95 million flagship Millennium project, the Odyssey complex.

With continued investment in visitor attractions in Northern Ireland together with a new marketing stance with the launch of Tourism Ireland in November 2001, which sees the countries two tourist boards merge, it is hoped that NI will develop its products as successfully as the Republic.

Introduction

Ireland has been one of Europe's greatest tourism success stories over the past 15 years, with year-on-year growth outstripping that of the rest of the region. One of the main foundations for this sustained growth has been the development of quality visitor attractions by the private, public and community sectors. Whilst the private sector has taken advantage of the strong commercial opportunities resulting from a doubling of tourist numbers and the associated increase in the economic well-being of the resident population, the public sector investments have been more focused on achieving strategic goals.

The strategic agenda, mapped out by Bord Failte (the Irish Tourist Board) has been to improve the range and quality of the attraction product, to develop in geographical areas where the overall tourism product was in need of strengthening, and influencing the distribution of tourism throughout Ireland. After some 15 years of the strategic and purposeful investment in the attraction sector in Ireland, the supply side is now well developed. Although scope, albeit limited, still exists to create new attractions to meet the leisure needs of the resident markets, there are few other gaps in the market. Evidence suggests that there is an on-going programme of investment and upgrading to reflect market trends across the existing supply of attractions in both the public and private sectors.

There have been relatively few failures of projects over the past decade. This has been due to the strategic leadership provided by Bord Failte, the careful planning of projects by proponents of schemes, and the absence of large, ambitious projects that characterised development in the UK in recent years. Attraction projects in Ireland have been, in the main, realistic in their scale and visitor projections, manageable in terms of their capital requirements and operational targets, and relevant to the market. In short, Ireland's success in tourism is generally reflected in the success of many of its attractions.

NI has seen an influx of investment in its tourism product, encouraged by the Good Friday Agreement and is well placed to see an increase in visitor numbers. New developments have included the Waterfront Hall, a theatre and music venue and the Odyssey complex, a Millennium project, which includes sports arena, music venue, science museum, IMAX and multiplex cinema as well as shops and restaurants.

Other reports of relevance:

- Special Report, Holidays - Coping with a Crisis, 2002

- Theme Parks Market - US Report, Consumer Intelligence, 2001

- Special Report, Holidays - Destination Marketing, 2001

- Special Report, Holidays - Planning, Buying, Financing Holidays, 2000

- The Future of Visitor Attractions, Travel & Tourism Analyst No.1 2000

- Theme Parks Abroad, UK Report, Leisure Intelligence, November 1999

and the forthcoming:

- City Breaks in Europe, Leisure Intelligence, April 2002

- Family Holidays in Europe, Leisure Intelligence, June 2002

- Hotels in Europe, Leisure Intelligence, August 2002

- Third Age Travel in Europe, Leisure Intelligence, October 2002

- Pre-family Holidays in Europe, Leisure Intelligence, December 2002.

Definitions

This report covers the attractions market in the Republic of Ireland as well as Northern Ireland.

An attraction is where it is feasible to charge admission for the sole purpose of sightseeing. An attraction must be a permanently established excursion destination, a primary purpose of which is to allow public access for entertainment, interest, or education; rather than being primarily a retail outlet or a venue for sporting, theatrical, or film performances. It must be open to the public, without prior booking, for published periods each year, and should be capable of attracting day visitors or tourists, as well as local residents. In addition the attraction must be a single business, under a single management, so that it is capable of answering the economic questions on revenue, employment etc, and must be receiving revenue directly from the visitors.

This report looks at a number of specific types of non-traditional attraction:

- Family entertainment centres (generally located in Spain) are usually located close to holiday beach resorts and are intended to offer a means of relieving the repetitiveness of a diet of two weeks of sun and sand.

- Pleasure/leisure Parks (such as the Oakwood white-knuckle complex in South West Wales) aim to provide an all-weather activity centre largely appealing to younger generations.

- Urban family entertainment destinations (eg Heron City near Madrid) aim to roll up the range of motivations for leisure-seeking into one place - shopping, electronic interactive activities, entertainment, eating and drinking.

- Theme Parks (such as Disneyland Paris and Universal Mediterranea) seek to retain visitors within their complexes of attractions by providing a whole-visit package - entertainment, 'edutainment', education, accommodation and restaurants, for example.

- Corporate brandlands (eg Swarowski Crystal factory in Austria, Volkswagen's Autostadt, the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin and Wedgwood's emerging glass and pottery centre) exploit the high level of brand recognition on the back of their general corporate marketing and promotion strategies, combining edutainment with consumer exploitation and revenue-earning from retail sales of their products on factory sites.

The definitions of travel and tourism industry and travel and tourism economy are taken from the World Travel and Tourism Council's (WTTC) Tourism Satellite Account methodology, which has identified two major concepts: travel and tourism consumption and travel and tourism demand, which help differentiate between the technical 'industry' (products and services) impact and the broader travel and tourism 'economy' impact (products and services for visitor consumption as well as products and services for industry demand).

The standard definitions used in the terminology of this report (and the Leisure Intelligence series) are as follows:

- tourism is any travel which involves an overnight stay away from home

-a holiday is a subjectively defined form of tourism, as defined by the tourist in response to surveys such as IPS or BNTS. A holiday can be distinguished from other leisure travel such as visits to friends and relatives (VFR) or shopping trips

- a long holiday is a holiday of four nights or more away from home; a short break is a holiday which involves one to three nights away from home

- short-haul refers to air holidays within Europe, dominated by flights to Mediterranean resorts but including the Canary Islands, which are treated as a part of the Spanish market. Long-haul, therefore, refers to holidays outside Europe

- an inclusive tour, or package holiday, is defined as the simultaneous sale of at least two elements of a holiday to the traveller: fares on public transport (eg flights) and commercial accommodation (eg hotel or self-catering apartment). Other elements, such as meals or excursions, are not essential to the definition of an inclusive tour. The term 'all-inclusive' is used to describe a special type of resort holiday in which food, drink, excursions and other services are provided as part of the total holiday cost.

- an independent holiday is one in which the traveller organises and books transport and accommodation from separate sources (eg a Channel ferry crossing and a caravan site in France). Seat- or flight-only is a type of independent holiday, and the terms are used to denote holidays in which travellers only purchase a return fare and thereafter book their own accommodation, car hire etc.

Sources of information

The Central Statistics Office provides a quarterly and annual analysis of overall tourism trends. This feeds in to the market research and strategic planning department of Bord Failte and , together with their extensive surveys of overseas visitors, provides a comprehensive and regularly updated database covering all aspects of tourism activity and market segmentation. This is an extremely high quality source of reliable, robust and up-to-date information.

Tourism Development International Ltd (TDI) a private tourism consultancy have also undertaken a number of surveys of paid visitor attractions in Ireland.

Data for Northern Ireland is collected by the Northern Ireland Tourist board. Since 1978 the English Tourism Council, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, the Scottish Tourist Board (now VisitScotland) and the Wales Tourist Board have collaborated to collect data in this sector using common definitions.

Currency conversions have been calculated at the rates: €1 = 0.79 Irish punts, €1 = GB£1.61 and €1 = US$0.89 (2001 average figures for $ and £).

Abbreviations

CERT	Co-ordinate Education, Recruitment and Training in tourism
CSO	Central Statistics Organisation
ERM	Exchange Rate Mechanism
EU	European Union
GDP	Gross Domestic Product
IR	Irish Pound
NI	Northern Ireland
NITB	Northern Ireland Tourist Board
PDI	Personal Disposable Income
RoI	Republic of Ireland
TDI	Tourism Development International Ltd
TGI	Target Group Index
UKTS	United Kingdom Travel Survey
WTO	World Tourism Organization