Vaccinated GB visitors a key summer market, says tourism chief
A Northern Ireland tourism boss has said vaccinated visitors from Great Britain should ensure a good summer season as the Department for the Economy launched a £290m recovery action plan.
The document contains no dates for reopening the economy but instead focuses on innovation, skills, foreign investment and building a green economy.
It also features plans to stimulate demand through tourism and retail voucher schemes, due to have been launched early this year before high rates of Covid-19 put them on ice.
Economy Minister Diane Dodds said it was a “blueprint to rebuild a stronger economy” with firms encouraged to innovate and workers to embrace new opportunities.
But answering questions ahead of its launch, she said “it will be for the Executive to decide when we will have that reopening of the economy”.
She said the retail voucher scheme was “being worked on”.
“You can’t have a high street voucher scheme while the high street is closed,” she added. “We want to have the scheme up and running at the time we will have optimum return from it.”
NI Tourism Alliance boss Joanne Stuart said the industry was looking ahead.
She said: “There’s huge disappointment that we’re not going to get open for Easter but now the focus is on how do we ensure we open sustainably, and can start to grow.
“Given the UK vaccination programme, GB will be a really important market for this year, and we are hoping that the Republic will make sufficient progress in its vaccination programme, because really it’s going to be all about the home markets again.”
The industry took a £600m hit last year, and was also losing around £250m in its usual visitor spend in the first quarter of this year.
The economic recovery plan notes a campaign for encouraging overseas investment into Northern Ireland.
Kevin Holland, the head of the department’s inward investment agency Invest NI, said the Northern Ireland Protocol is drawing attention from investors as it gives us barrier-free access to markets in GB and the EU.
The document does not name the protocol as a selling point but says the campaign will “underline new selling points” post-brexit.
It said there would be a “push for a permanent and complete solution to end frictions brought about by the protocol and... clarity on long term trading arrangements and the regulatory environment”.
Ahead of the launch, the Minister said her political opposition as a member of the DUP did not conflict with Invest NI, adding she would sell the attractions of the NI services sector operating outside the EU State Aid regime — an effect of Brexit and not the protocol.
Mrs Dodds said she and Invest NI agreed the protocol was “making life very, very difficult for firms to trade between GB and NI”. She added: “Just today I got more emails from firms who cannot get deliveries, about issues relating to the protocol.
“What we need is an absolute final settlement to the issues around the protocol in a permanent way and we will then all be able to move forward.”