Embrace a Giant Spirit: Experience Portfolio

Authentically Northern Irish, the portfolio contains large and small attractions and visitor experiences that drive visitor demand, as well as smaller, more niche experiences that help extend stays in Northern Ireland by offering further compelling things to do. 

The Portfolio is an opportunity for tourism experience operators to enhance their engagement with the NI tourism brand and increase their market potential through a collaborative relationship with Tourism NI.  

Programme Details 

The Embrace a Giant Sprit: Experience Portfolio was developed following feedback and insights from our key stakeholders and industry to create a more inclusive framework and support a wide range of tourism experience operators underpinned by our NI tourism brand. The Portfolio aims to: 

• Provide an accessible tourism brand framework that allows all organisations and businesses to both develop new experience products and grow our existing offer, playing to their strengths 
• Grow collaborative partnerships across the regions of Northern Ireland to further enhance our resources and deliver mutual benefits 
• Facilitate tailored investment at different levels to grow tourism experiences and increase the capacity of tourism businesses in a sustainable way, moving away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach – understanding the value all businesses have to our tourism offering in NI 

• Build on and grow the professionalism and commercialisation of tourism businesses to continue to develop Northern Ireland as a destination of choice with a confidence in our skills and a confidence in our offer  
• Enable and empower tourism businesses to be engaged with the brand and deliver consistently excellent visitor experiences  

Eligibility Criteria  

To participate within the Experience Portfolio, businesses are required to meet a minimum defined market-ready criteria to confidently respond to the needs of our visitors and for Tourism NI to determine that we are promoting an assured standard of quality experiences. The criteria is evolving and designed to respond to ongoing research and trends therefore will continue to be reviewed to consistently met the expectations and needs of the tourism industry. Criteria includes:  

• Be a tourism business operating in Northern Ireland, offering visitor experiences that align to our tourism brand values with an identifiable Unique Selling Point  

• Have been operating as a tourism business for a minimum of one year  
• Have a dynamic online presence with clear schedule availability and dates for booking if your experiences can be directly booked by consumers 
• Have appropriate licensing and permissions where required 
• Commit to sharing key business information with Tourism NI  

For full eligibility criteria and to find out more information on the Experience Portfolio we strongly encourage tourism experience operators to refer to our overview document.

How to Apply  

To apply to become a member of the Embrace a Giant Spirit: Experience Portfolio, please complete the following expression of interest. Your application will be assessed by a member of our Experience Development team where depending on your alignment to the criteria, will be accepted for inclusion or declined with feedback.  

Before applying for the Embrace a Giant Spirit Experience Portfolio, we recommend that you review the programme document above to best ensure you understand the information and that your business is eligible for inclusion.  

Please note that some questions will ask you for business metrics or information, such as visitor numbers, visitor capacity and experience availability. We encourage you to have this information available when completing the expression of interest.