Introduction
This toolkit is for Arts, Culture and Heritage businesses who wish to attract visitors from outside their local area.
About this toolkit
It shows you how you can:
- Be part of the Northern Ireland tourism industry
- Develop an arts, culture and/or heritage product that will attract people from around the world
- Network with others to grow your business
- Create a product that is sustainable and viable
It explains what you need to think about and what you need to do in five key steps:
- Checking your foundations
- Understanding your customers
- Developing your tourism offer
- Building your networks
- Making it happen
What makes a tourist?
This toolkit is about tourism and focuses specifically on those visitors who live outside your area and therefore who stay overnight. They could be a family from Belfast having a weekend on the Causeway Coast, some friends from Galway staying in Fermanagh, a couple from Manchester on a city break in Belfast or a multi-generational group from the US touring Northern Ireland.
Whoever they are, whenever they visit, they are looking for new and interesting things to do, often wanting to find out more about the place they are visiting and its people. They have limited time and this may well be their only visit to your area.
Not everyone wants to be a tourist, we all want to be welcomed and hosted as visitors or guests so this is the terminology used in this toolkit.
Your steps into tourism
Tourism can offer great rewards for cultural enterprises with innovation, drive and commitment. It is a big business with huge opportunities for Northern Ireland.
If you are an established local business, diversifying into tourism can widen your horizons and increase your clientele.
Tourism is highly competitive - not just here, but internationally. We compete with many other parts of the UK, Republic of Ireland, Europe as well as the rest of the world. The people who travel to visit us have high standards so your offer will need to be excellent.
Your route to becoming a successful tourism business will require effort, commitment and investment. It begins with clear-sighted and careful planning.
For more on the benefits of linking tourism and culture, look at How Arts, Culture and Heritage Works in Tourism