Fáilte Ireland tees up plans to grow €270m sector

It might be easy to admire the numbers surrounding the global reach of this week’s Dubai Duty Free Irish Open before sitting back in anticipation of the deluge of dollars to come.

After all, the 3,000 hours of television coverage from Ballyliffin that will be beamed into the homes of affluent golf fans from San Diego to Sydney in the coming days is a showcasing opportunity that has the tournament’s sponsors and organisers salivating and Ireland’s tourism industry keenly focused on the potential it offers for bringing business to this island.

Golf tourism alone brings €270m to the Republic of Ireland each year but Fáilte Ireland does not take that figure for granted and staging an Irish Open in a new area such as Donegal’s Inishowen Peninsula is a magnificent opportunity for the national tourism authority to spread its wings in an overall industry landscape where 70% of its business goes to 30% of the land mass.

“From a tourism development perspective, Fáilte Ireland are focusing on driving a wider footprint of tourism onto the island.

“Donegal and the North-west is a strategically prioritised area so we’re delighted that an event of this stature is coming into Donegal,” the authority’s Letterkenny-based business development manager Martin Donnelly told the Irish Examiner.

“The opportunity this is and the platform it presents to put Donegal and the North-west at its best to a worldwide audience, those opportunities don’t come around too often. So, it’s a great opportunity for Donegal.

“We’re absolutely delighted to continue to be associated with this event and the platform to convert golf tourism into areas like Donegal is a wonderful opportunity.

“We see our role, I guess, in taking that platform and converting more business, getting more golf tourists to this particular area and I think we’re more than capable of doing it. You need a quality product to do that and this is a world-class product and offering we’re sending out to the world.

“I think we can convert business on the back of the platform it presents.”

As Donnelly suggests, there is no place for complacency in Fáilte Ireland’s strategy.

“Golf tourism is worth €270m to the Republic of Ireland. That’s not to be sniffed at but it has to continue to grow.

“During the years when we were really struggling economically, golf tourism continued to grow. Between 2008 and 2012, it grew 6% six per cent year on year against one of the toughest economic backdrops we’ve seen in a generation.

That shows you that golf tourism is very resilient, that our customers are resilient to those economic changes and they continue to drive economic benefit to the areas that needed it most when we needed it most.

“This is a genuinely world-class product and when we’re in the overseas marketplace and asking customers to come to Ireland and enjoy golf, it’s something we can stand over.

“We understand in leisure tourism in general, 70% of our business goes to 30% of the land mass. That’s a challenge and for a number of reasons.

“Capacity is one of them. If I drew a line on a map of this island from Dublin to Galway and down into Kerry, that’s where a lot of that business goes to. So we’re trying to spread the footprint of tourism. The beauty of golf is that some of our finest golf courses are outside those areas, including the wonderful Ballyliffin.

“We believe we can leverage that world-class product to encourage consumers from all our core markets to come to areas like the north-west and by stepping away from Dublin, from Galway, and from the south-west.

“That’s the beauty of it. Golf can support our strategy of spreading that footprint because the product is in the areas that we’re prioritising.”

Donnelly points out that golf tourism has a “massive economic benefit” to Ireland way beyond this country’s golf courses.

A survey we did in 2012 showed that only 11% of the revenue generated by golf tourism was spent on tee times. The rest is spent in clubhouses, the restaurants, bars and transportation, accommodation. That shows you the spread of the economic benefit.

“There is enormous benefit that can be gained from this sort of platform but again, it comes back to the platform. The world’s eyes will be on Donegal and Ballyliffin in July and the number of hours of coverage around the world presents an enormous opportunity.

“We see our role in converting that platform into business.”