Embrace a Giant Spirit: Experience Portfolio

With a focus on unique and authentic tourism experiences across all regions of Northern Ireland, the portfolio is suitable for large and small attractions and visitor experiences that drive visitor demand, as well as smaller, niche experiences that help extend stays in Northern Ireland by offering further compelling things to inspire visitors.  

Programme Details

The Portfolio is designed for tourism attractions and experiences of all sizes that help to inspire and extend visitor stays in Northern Ireland. It supports businesses that drive demand and provide compelling, unique and authentic tourism experiences to enhance their market potential and appeal.   

Through participation, your business will gain access to enhanced learning, development, and networking opportunities structured around areas of scalability, growth, key market identification, marketing skills, commercial skills, and travel trade readiness.  

Participating businesses are expected to actively engage with Tourism NI throughout the year to maximise the programme benefits. Participation and eligibility against the programme criteria will be reviewed on an annual basis to maintain the integrity and standards of the Experience Portfolio. 

The portfolio aims to: 

• Provide a structured brand framework that allows tourism experience businesses of all sizes to both develop new experience products and grow their existing offer 

• Foster collaborative partnerships across the regions of Northern Ireland to further enhance our resources and deliver mutual benefits  

• Support sustainable business growth through tailored and exclusive investment and development 

• Enhance the professionalism and commercial success of tourism businesses to help the destination stand out competitively in the tourism market 

• 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 must meet a minimum market-ready criteria to ensure quality and readiness to respond to the needs of our visitors. The criteria is subject to periodic review to reflect evolving industry trends and visitor expectations. Businesses must: 

• Be a tourism business operating in Northern Ireland, offering experiences that align to our tourism brand values with an identifiable unique selling point (USP) 

• Have been operating and delivering at least one core visitor experience for at least one year 

• Offer a regular experience schedule, delivering visitor experiences no less than monthly during your opening season  

• Maintain a strong online presence with clear booking availability and advance scheduled dates 

• If B2B only, provide clearly advertised experiences which detail how to book and general availability 

• Hold appropriate licensing and permissions where required  

• Commit to sharing key business metrics and information through an annual participant survey 

For full eligibility criteria and to find out more information on the Experience Portfolio we strongly encourage tourism experience operators to refer to the accompanying programme booklet. 

How to Apply

To express your interest in joining the Embrace a Giant Spirit: Experience Portfolio, please complete the expression of interest below. Your application will be assessed by a member of our Experience Development team where if successful, an on-site visit to your business will be arranged to progress your application or if declined, you will receive feedback on areas for improvement.  

Please note that some questions will ask you about 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.