The Northern Ireland Tourism Alliance, which advocates on behalf of the entire tourism industry in Northern Ireland, is pressing the NI Executive to make critical spending decisions around £169m which is currently at its disposal.

And in a report launched recently, the Alliance says that it has calculated that the tourism industry here could be in line to lose a hefty £700m this year as a result of a 70 per cent drop in overnight stays.

Speaking to this magazine, Dr Stuart described the situation for tourism on the ground in Northern Ireland as ‘very bad’:

‘Obviously, tourism was closed up for three or four months and 60 per cent of our revenue is generated throughout that period up to the end of September,’ she said. ‘So it was great when we were able to reopen and we had lots of people going out, but just not at the levels they were at last year.

‘Some sectors, such as self-catering and restaurants with the Eat Out To Help Out scheme have seen good numbers, but there are also a lot of organisations that have not been able to operate at their full capacity because of social distancing measures and so on.

‘We are now in a situation where we are going into the quietest period of the year and businesses won’t have the opportunity to build back the reserves that would have seen them through to March.’

The NITA’s report estimates that during the period of lockdown, around £300m in direct visitor spend was lost to the tourism industry in Northern Ireland. That figure is projected to rise to as much as £600m by the end of 2020. In addition, 80 per cent of those who work in tourism here were on full and part-time furlough at the end of September.

The Alliance has laid out the actions which it believes the Executive must now take around funding for Covid-19 interventions. Some £169m has been available since the end of July – £53m from an underspend in previous schemes and £116m from the Chancellor’s July statement but no decisions around what is to be done with this money have been made.

‘Tourism businesses just can’t keep on going,’ warned Dr Stuart. ‘We have lots of small businesses and self-catering concerns that provide these experiences and it’s very difficult for them and also for the larger groups and attractions that are reliant on the international tourism market.’

And she continued:

‘There is good pent-up demand for next year, people want to come to Northern Ireland but the question is whether there will be enough of the tourist sector left to service that demand, this is what we have to deal with.’

In its report, the Alliance identifies seven key areas where it says action is urgently required to support the tourism industry. These include maximising demand; securing additional regional access; a crisis management support fund and product development programme and a re-opening date for business conferences.

‘We cannot afford to wait any longer to implement these proposals,’ warned Dr Stuart. ‘Tourism has shown that it is a resilient industry that has done everything to keep going through unprecedented times. The additional funding is required to ensure we have a strong base from which to rebuild in 2021 and beyond.’

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The NITA was founded last year to provide a single unified voice for the hospitality and tourism industries here on issues of concern.

Addressing an audience of key players from the public and private sectors, Brenda Morgan, chair of NITA, provided a progress review. She told the gathering that the rapid growth in membership of the Alliance reflected a demand for progress on the topics that were important to the sector.

‘From the outset we have identified VAT and APD as massive obstacles which are putting a brake on our industry’s growth,’ she added. ‘Air Passenger Duty…is the highest tax of its kind in the world while, at the same time, the UK’s 20 per cent tourism VAT rate is amongst the highest in Europe, putting us at a huge disadvantage when the Republic imposes a rate of just 13.5 per cent. Those are two major issues which unite our industry and, working together, we will continue to push government for positive reform.’

Brenda promised that as 2019 progressed, NITA would be visiting all parts of Northern Ireland t consult face-to-face with its members on their issues of concern and to hear first-hand how they believed the current difficulties around the sourcing of skilled staff should be handled.

‘Northern Ireland is making up for a lot of lost ground and tourism remains vulnerable.  The uncertainties surrounding Brexit have only added to our legitimate concerns, adding a difficult and, as yet, unmanageable layer of complexity,’ she added. ‘However, as we teeter on the brink of making ours a billion-pound-a-year industry, we have been given a tantalising glimpse of just how successful we could be in the future, if we receive the support and recognition which our sector so clearly merits.’

Brenda also said that NITA remained fully committed to supporting the sector as it worked with Tourism Ireland and Tourism NI on their goal to double sectoral income to £2bn annually by 2025.

Tourism is already making a massive contribution to Northern Ireland PLC, and NITA is fully committed to supporting the sector as, together, we work with Tourism Ireland and Tourism Northern Ireland to double tourism income to £2Billion annually by 2025.

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Co-ordinating the response of the NI tourism industry to the current Treasury consultations on the impact here of our VAT differential with the Republic and the continued imposition of Air Passenger Duty (APD) will be the first task of the new Northern Ireland Tourism Alliance (NITA).

Headed up by Doreen McKenzie – one of the Northern Irish travel trade’s most recognisable figures – the new group is set to meet for the first time this month.

NITA is an umbrella body that intends to provide a unified voice for the entire tourism sector in Northern Ireland, everything from camping and caravan providers to hoteliers, restaurateurs and coach operators.

Doreen’s role with NITA will initially be for six months as she oversees the implementation phase of the fledgling organisation, recruits its members and forms the board.

Her first task will be to formulate a response to the ongoing Westminster inquiry into APD and the impact on tourism of VAT rates on the island of Ireland.

Those involved in the tourism trade here in Northern Ireland have long called for government action on both these issues, but the lack of parity on VAT between the north, where it is set at 20 per cent and the south, where operators pay just nine per cent, has been a source of bitter contention over the years.

Speaking to LCN this month, Doreen said that she felt it was important to view issues such as APD from the perspective of the Treasury.

Northern Ireland’s former devolved Assembly removed APD on long haul flights in 2013, but it had no power to vary the tax on short haul journeys and it remains in place.

Doreen said that she believed that the industry needed to ask itself why the Treasury would remove the tax just for Northern Ireland.

“I think there are a number of arguments in our favour,” she continued. “We have a land border with the south, where they have no APD. Here, we have expensive APD and we pay that tax twice if we go to GB and then take a connecting flight to somewhere else.

“As well as that, APD was originally intended as a green tax, but none of the money lifted from it has ever been used specifically for that purpose.

“And, of course, they get significant money out of APD and that would have to be replaced, but we are arguing that if there was no APD in Northern Ireland, traveller numbers would increase and the measure would be revenue neutral within a couple of years.”

Doreen said, too, that she felt there were a number of “half-way measures” that could be considered, such as waiving the tax on connecting flights for travellers arriving from Northern Ireland.

Doreen McKenzie will be well-known to many readers. She has worked in the NI travel industry for more than 45 years, 27 of those as proprietor of her own business, Knock Travel. She ia also a member of the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) and sat as a board director there for 15 years, taking part in many committees, particularly those relating to aviation, in which she has a special interest.

Around 70 per cent of Doreen’s Knock Travel business involved government contracts:

“My claim to fame is that we organised travel for the G8 Summit in Enniskillen [in 2013]. It was recalled by many of those involved as one of the friendliest and easiest summits ever, although it was a lot of hard work for us. This was a £3m contract over three months and it put us under a lot of pressure.”

Doreen retired from a day-to-day role in the travel trade in June last year after selling her business to Oasis Travel. By that stage, she was no longer arranging travel for the government and was already considering retirement:

“I was 65 and I never intended to continue working forever,” she said. “When we lost that work, it just pushed me in that direction a little faster than I might otherwise have gone.”

However, Doreen still finds time work as a travel consultant and she still travels to London around twice a month in order to sit on ABTA committees.

“I thought that I was going to be retiring last year, but that didn’t happen so I never say never any more,” she told LCN. “I’m enjoying things, there are a lot of synergies [in NITA] coming across from my business life and I am optimistic about it all. I think the time is right for this. NITA isn’t just going to be another talking shop, we are here with a vision and a purpose. We want to get set-up, get this constituted and start looking at a tourism strategy for the future that will fit into the government’s work programme.”

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