During a meeting last October the chairs and managers of the regional tourism authorities presented me with a paper in which they listed the public sector bodies involved in the tourism sector, outlined their roles and responsibilities and suggested a number of ways of improving co-operation between agencies in order to ensure optimum return from investment of public funds in tourism marketing and product development.
The multiplicity of bodies involved with tourism development and promotion carries the risk of duplication of effort and less efficient use of resources, particularly public resources. The best way of avoiding fragmentation is if all bodies involved with tourism development work towards the realisation of a common strategy, adopting a unified and clearly focused approach.
The tourism development strategy, which Bord Fáilte has recently published, is designed to provide a framework within which coherent decisions can be made by all funding bodies whose activities impact on tourism. In addition to a national strategic framework, the strategy identifies the importance of drawing up integrated plans for tourism zones to which all players can work.
Under new contractual arrangements entered into between Bord Fáilte and regional tourism authorities, the RTAs are to embark on a pro-active programme to co-ordinate all publicly funded tourism activities in their regions. This will ensure as far as possible that they contribute optimally to the achievement of national tourism objectives, and that local promotional materials accord with national and regional tourism strategies. In respect of rural tourism, following initial consumer-oriented research to define the concept properly, Bord Fáilte will establish a focus group, representative of a wide range of relevant interests to come up with agreed action points to which all can work.
Additional InformationIn the Western Development Commission area, a high-level steering group is being established to co-ordinate all relevant interests in the implementation of a common tourism strategy. I have asked Bord Fáilte to chair that group and the RTAs will be represented on it. Perhaps most importantly on the issue of co-ordination, in the context of the national development plan, my Department has continued to place enormous emphasis on the need to ensure that infrastructure spend by other Departments and nontourism agencies, supports tourism priorities.