The Irish state has not adequately invested in an infrastructure to allow tourism to flourish in a managed and sustainable manner.
Like all industries, the fact is that tourism requires an adequate infrastructure in order to function correctly in attracting people to the country while avoiding the snowballing effect of overtourism. Another fact is that the Irish state has not adequately invested in an infrastructure to allow tourism to flourish in a managed and sustainable manner.
Once again, the gold standard in this regard is France. They continue to be the top tourism country in the world and the reason is because they have always created and managed their tourism infrastructure through well-funded local government. It’s a system where everyone is buying into the industry and everyone benefits through its development,as well as being aware of the pitfalls that overdevelopment can bring.
In Ireland, it’s the opposite: all the funding and executive power is coming from above. There is one national tourism authority that is more concerned with overseas marketing than anything else. We also have a tourism ministry based in Dublin, which consistently gets tagged on as an afterthought to a variety of other ministries.
It’s very important to have Fáilte Ireland. They come up with the big ideas and the promotion of our country both internally and externally, but their brief is not about the funding, development and sustainable management of our tourism industry. That has been left to the laissez-faire policy of central Government.
In fact, there’s a strong case to be made in stating that the government’s actions over the years have been detrimental to careful management of the tourism industry.
The Vanishing Budget Traveller: Consequences of Misguided Policy
If you go looking for accommodation in France or Spain, for example, you’ll find and entire range of accommodation from one and two-star hotels and guesthouses up to five-star level. In Ireland, the lower-cost accommodation options have been eliminated – stricken from the list.
This is a result of over-reaching policy of upgrading everything to what was assumed to be a high standard that all tourists required. There was perhaps too much reliance on what rich Americans wanted, rather than catering for all tourists, but the net result is that the cheap B&B sector (including the simple rural B&B farmhouses that once were a mainstay of rural
tourism in Ireland) is no more and today’s options are for hotels or hotel-standard B&B outlets.
Maybe we’re turning a corner in realising what is lacking in our tourism infrastructure, with recent comments from the outgoing head of Fáilte Ireland Paul Keeley referring to the dangers of over-reliance on the American market in the context of “unorthodox policy decisions” from the increasingly potty American administration.
“There is an anxiety that, quite aside from having a growing proportion of your business coming from North America, if we see the dollar weakening or we see any shift in sentiment among Americans about travelling and feeling welcome if they travel etc. Any of those kind of things would be a worry,” Keeley commented at the recent Meitheal in Killarney.
Untapped Potential in Outdoor and Marine Tourism
There urgently needs to be a careful look at the sectors for which we in Ireland have distinct advantages over our competitors. Take hill walking, for example. Ireland has arguably the best climate in Europe for hill-walking holidays. As someone who has walked in a number of countries including Ireland, I can see it for myself. The changeable, temperate climate is perfect for being able to walk in constantly evolving scenery without getting too hot.
Where we fall down compared to our competitors is in the almost complete lack of supporting infrastructure.
Walking on the island of Mallorca, you can walk from refugio to refugio. An overnight in these local-government-owned hostelries is very cheap and gives you what you need as a walker – a comfortable bed, some hearty food and the chance to catch up with fellow travellers. The accommodation is in a dormitory and you eat what you’re given, but a more contented group of walkers you’ll not see. If you walk any of the many sections of the Santiago route through France, you’ll not want for restauration and affordable accommodation.
In contrast, the St Declan’s Way Walk was opened to great fanfare a few years ago. It’s a potentially wonderful tourism product in a country that is made for such a product and it’s a beautiful walk. I know because I walked most of it with my three sons. Along the route, however, there is virtually nowhere to stay and nowhere to eat, aside from a couple of the main towns en route. One is therefore is obliged either to have two cars and do a lot of driving, or get taxis everywhere at enormous additional expense; all of which takes you away from the walking route itself.
Another area where there is a dearth of infrastructure because of the lack of governance of our great tourism industry is in sailing. We don’t have a marina infrastructure – only the occasional one dotted along our coastline. For experienced sailors, Ireland offers great variety of activity but trying to visit Ireland compared to somewhere like France (which has arguably the best infrastructure for seafarers in Europe) is very complicated. Fáilte Ireland carried out surveys on sailors across Europe, asking them if they would be interested in coming to Ireland if it had better facilities. The answers were mainly negative.
However, the question was destined for failure from the outset. The point of developing a successful tourism industry is to identify what your country has and then develop it. It’s a pointless exercise to ask people if they think they’d like it if you made it for them. You need to develop an infrastructure that isn’t there and then begin to market it.
Reimagining Irish Tourism: Language, Dublin, and the Path Forward
Irish tourism also needs to gear up on its languages and embrace a multilingual culture.
There’s a vast difference between what French or German tourists experience here and what Irish tourists experience when they go to their countries and find lots of bilingual or multilingual signage and local expertise. We have good language skills (particularly compared to the British who seem to have totally abandoned languages) in this country that only need a bit more effort to have more people gaining fluency in French or German. If we did this, it would be an enormous boost to those markets. They’re vitally important markets because they’re close to home and taking them seriously means less reliance on the USA.
Then there is the question of Dublin. What is there to be done with our capital? There seems to be a complete breakdown of law-and-order on the streets of Dublin these days, with drug- dealing and petty crime rampant. Most of the time, it’s in the form of hassle for passers-by and theft but it regularly spills over into violent disorder and unprovoked assault.
A government taking on the responsibility of making changes to Dublin could begin by a zero- tolerance attitude to drug-dealing and usage for a start. That would probably solve half of the issues and a government leading by example usually encourages a great effort by all. Either way, the sights that visitors are subjected to on O’Connell Street on a regular basis are simply not tolerated in most other cities across Europe.
On the plus side, there are strong efforts being made by the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment to work with local authorities and private enterprise with the 5-year Destination Experience Development Plans and Fáilte Ireland’s Platform for Growth schemes. They may go some way to bridging the gap that exists between our basic political structures and those of our competing tourism organisations.
Overall, we urgently need a government that will take the issue of tourism infrastructure seriously and stop damaging it. If not, we’ll continue to become one of the most expensive and anti-tourist countries in Europe.
