Embrace a Giant Spirit: Experience Development
Holidaymakers today have more choice than ever before, therefore our Northern Ireland – Embrace a Giant Spirit is positioned to inspire visitors to choose Northern Ireland over competing destinations by offering unique and authentic experiences that they can only get here – connecting them to our people, culture, landscapes and stories.
Tourism experiences that align with the Embrace a Giant Spirit brand are saleable, market-ready experiences which confidently respond to the trends and motivations of what our visitors look for.
New Tourism Experiences
When developing a new tourism experience, our online resources are the best starting point for you. These resources aim to directly signpost you to programmes and toolkits that will help you design compelling experiences, generate more business and help you gain a better understanding of the tourism sector. Some useful links are below:
When developing your experience, it is important to understand how your product enhances the offer of your local area as a destination. Therefore, it is important to first make contact with your local authority tourism department. The 11 Local Councils in NI have responsibility for local destination marketing and business support under local economic development measures.
Is Your Tourism Experience Market-Ready?
Before selling your tourism experience to visitors or travel trade, it’s important to ensure you’re truly market-ready and confident that you can meet the requirements of potential customers. That means having the right systems, pricing, and customer service in place to meet industry expectations and deliver a consistent, high-quality experience.
Our Market Readiness Checklist is designed to help you assess where you are and what steps you may still need to take. From booking processes and business analytics to digital visibility and visitor communication, this resource will guide you through the essentials.
Download the checklist now to confidently prepare your tourism experience for the marketplace, and utilise our free resources to address any gaps you might identify.
Brand Experiences
Across all aspects of a visit to Northern Ireland, our experiences should embody our destination brand inspirers, the four key ideas at the heart of the giant spirit of Northern Ireland and the things that we want visitors to discover, think about and talk about during their experience and long after.
Big-Hearted
Being Big-hearted means that you put the people of Northern Ireland and their warm approach to visitors front and centre in your experience. Big-hearted experiences help visitors to meet and get to know the people of Northern Ireland.
Original
Being Original lies in our ambition and investment in continuous development of our offer skills and standards. It means thinking creatively about the experience you can offer and what is unique to our destination.
Legends & Stories
Using Legends and Stories means experiences will draw on our great tradition of storytelling, creating compelling offers that both attract and delight visitors and that leave lasting memories..
Land, Water & Sea
Experiences that reflect Land, Water and Sea maximise the potential of our rich natural resources, celebrate locality of provenance and apply sustainable practices.
Giant Spirit experiences also deliver on our brand ‘awakeners’ – the desires and motivations of our key visitors and how to awaken the giant spirit within them:
- Distinctly Northern Irish
- Innovative
- Connect with Local People
- Participatory
- Welcoming to Everyone
- Authentic
- Sustainable
- Available all year round
For more information on Northern Ireland – Embrace a Giant Spirit and how to develop experiences that align with the brand values please refer to Northern Ireland's Embrace a Giant Spirit Brand | Tourism NI