Londonderry’s Halloween festival inspires tourism plan to grow visitor numbers

Tourism Ireland is set to push for increased visitor numbers to Northern Ireland outside the peak summer season.

Alice Mansergh, chief executive designate of Tourism Ireland, at the launch of their 2024 marketing plan, at the ICC Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA) (PA Wire)

The success of Londonderry’s Halloween festival has inspired a new plan by tourism chiefs to expand visitor numbers across the year in Northern Ireland.

Tourism Ireland aims to increase the value of overseas tourism in Northern Ireland by a 6.5% average year on year to 2030.

Alice Mansergh, chief executive designate, of the north south body outlined the plan at the launch of Tourism Ireland’s 2024 Marketing Plan in Belfast.

Tourism supports more than 65,000 jobs in Northern Ireland and generates an estimated billion pounds in revenue.

Ms Mansergh described 2023 as the first full year without coronavirus pandemic restrictions in place and said hotel occupancy and air access having surpassed 2019 levels.

She said research indicates that the Giant’s Causeway remains one of the most searched for attractions globally for Ireland, while Ireland has been named best island destination by Wanderlust Magazine, Co Donegal made Lonely Planet’s top five global places to visit and Belfast was mentioned on National Geographic travellers’ Cool List.

“Our vision at Tourism Ireland is to increase the value of overseas tourism to the island of Ireland, sustainably supporting the economies, communities and the environment,” she said.

She said they are aiming to increase revenue year over year for Northern Ireland in terms of overseas tourism by 6.5% to 2030.

This is a higher figure than the target of 5.6% for the island of Ireland overall.

Ms Mansergh said that is in recognition of “all the future potential for Northern Ireland”.

She said while there are some capacity constraints in terms of accommodation in peak seasons, there is also capacity seasons in off-peak seasons.

“Hotel occupancy in Northern Ireland is on average 84% in the summer months and 69% from October to May, that 15 percentage point gap alone is worth tens of millions pounds to businesses,” she said.

“We have the opportunity to create a longer and more evenly spread tourism season.”

Ms Mansergh said this effort will focus on capitalising on the interest in Halloween, and praising Derry’s annual festival which is the biggest of its kind in Europe.

“We think spring can be a real season of green, it’s a time for exploration of nature, we know scenery is one of the number one reasons why people come here so it’s a great time to see iconic Northern Ireland gardens coming into bloom – we’ll be hoping to stretch out that spring season,” she said.

“In autumn, Halloween can act as a pivotal moment here. Not everybody knows that it originated here on our shores over 2,000 years ago in Celtic culture.

“With our partners in Tourism Northern Ireland and Visit Derry, Derry Halloween is already the biggest festival of its kind across Europe, now imagine that we all come together and that anywhere a visitor would go across Northern Ireland in the autumn months they get a sense of that authentic heritage and history behind one of the world’s favourite seasonal moments, Halloween, which started here.”

She also paid tribute to Derry for “recognising this opportunity first of all”, adding: “we’re so excited to help scale the story up overseas”.

Ian Snowden, permanent secretary of the Department for the Economy also addressed the gathering, emphasising the importance of tourism to the economy.

“The pandemic massively disrupted and was a difficult time for the industry here and everywhere else,” he said.

“2023 was the first year that we got back to something close to normal after the pandemic and some of the numbers for the year past are very encouraging, for example hotel occupancy for the first 11 months of the year exceeded the pre-pandemic levels, so the sector really has demonstrated resilience.”