Minister Catherine Martin leads Tourism Ireland’s biggest-ever sales mission to the Middle East, alongside CEO Niall Gibbons, while unveiling plans for the imminent ‘greening’ of Expo 2020 Dubai
Ireland rolls out the green carpet for the Middle East as it drops it Covid-19 restrictions, and unveils plans for the 2022 St Patrick’s Festival at Expo 2020 Dubai this March 17.
“The great St. Patrick's Global Greening initiative has landed in Dubai,” Ireland’s Tourism Minister Catherine Martin, said last month. “Ireland is open again: open for visitors, trade and business, open for new ideas, for innovation, and open for sharing the lessons of these past two years. Let St. Patrick's Day 2022 be a celebration of the human spirit, a moment to express our values of friendship, community, creativity and solidarity.“Expo 2020 Dubai will go green for a day alongside the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Empire State Building in New York, Niagara Falls, Sydney Opera House and hundreds of other iconic locations around the world. Martin Hayes, a personal hero of mine, and a true national treasure, will lead an especially creative concert by the National Concert Hall.”
Minister Martin announced a packed programme for the day, including, culture, sport, screen, business and community events and of course, the famous St. Patrick’s Day parade. Festivities will begin with animation and screen events on March 15 and 16.
“Ireland has brought in an all-government approach to Expo 2020 in Dubai. We have worked right across our departments, our state agencies, business arts and culture, academia and the creative industries, to ensure a really high impact Irish presence.
“We are a small country that make makes a disproportionately big impact,” said Minister Martin. SALES MISSION
In the UAE last month for a number of key meetings and the unveiling of 2022 St Patrick’s Festival at Expo 2020 Dubai, Minister Martin also led the Tourism Ireland’s largest-ever sales mission to the Middle East, alongside CEO Niall Gibbons. Game of Thrones Studio Tour, the newest multi-million-euro visitor experience in Ireland, was part of the sales mission alongside hotels, DMCs and other visitor experiences, including The Merrion, Titanic Belfast, Conrad Dublin and By Appointment DMC.
“We're looking forward to a successful reopening and relaunch of Ireland in this region for the 2022 season,” Tourism Ireland CEO Niall Gibbons tells TTN. “It's a really exciting sales visit this year. Apart from being our largest-ever trade mission to the Middle East - we have brought 17 partners from across the island – this is also the first time we will have 10 partners from Saudi Arabia flying in. The Saudi market is something that we have done a very limited amount of work in, and we don't have a presence there. So, this is a good opportunity to assess what's a rapidly changing market from a tourism perspective.”
“We are a small country that makes a disproportionately big impact”
– Catherine Martin
CEO Gibbons says: “The vaccination rates in Ireland are very high. About 95 per cent of all adults are vaccinated and nearly all have had boosters as well. The Irish government has announced the lifting of all Covid-19 related restrictions at the end of this January, so we look forward to a good summer for Irish tourism.
“Ireland just requires you to have proof of vaccination and to fill up an electronic geolocation form,” says Gibbons.
This summer, Emirates will ramp up its Dublin connectivity back to 11 flights per week, Etihad Airways will move back up to four flights weekly and Qatar Airways will move up to 10 flights a week at the end of March. “By summer, we're looking at almost 30 flights per week into Ireland. As air capacity increases in the region, it provides us more opportunities. And the feedback that we get from people who have gone to Ireland, especially those that haven't been before, is quite positive,” Gibbons says.
The UAE and Ireland are tied together by certain commonalties and a few differences. Falconry in Ireland, which has recently been listed in the Unesco’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as well as Ireland’s equine tradition find common interests in the Middle East. Ireland’s temperate climate, on the other hand, is quite different from the region, and people from the Middle East really enjoy Irish weather, even the rain, Gibbons tells us.
“Our biggest markets are Great Britain, the United States, France and Germany - they're the top 70 per cent of our business, but this part of the world is very important. We've been out here for over a decade, we've invested heavily in the marketplace. We have a great team here led by Aisling McDermott, and we have been building a lot of strong relationships over the years.”
Before the pandemic, 2019 was the best year ever for tourism to the island of Ireland, with almost 11.3 million overseas visitors (9.7 million to Ireland), of which 75,000 visitors came from the Middle East. Around 65 per cent of all visitors from the Middle East to Ireland come from the UAE. CREATIVITY IS KEY
“The pandemic has highlighted a deep appreciation of the critical links between human connection and wellbeing,” Tourism Minister Catherine Martin, tells us in an exclusive interview. “For Expo 2020 Dubai, we have revisited our programme, and decided to build on a simple idea that creativity is the critical priority that leads to wellbeing for individuals, for communities and the whole of our society, and that creativity is innate and accessible to everyone. The creativity of scientists and engineers comes from the same source as the creativity of operators and musicians.”
The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, announced funding of €6.6 million ($7.44 million) for the 2022 Creative Ireland Programme Creative Communities initiative, which aims to enable people of all ages to engage with creative projects in their local area in Ireland.
Minister Catherine Martin is also Deputy Leader of the Green Party in Ireland. “I’m aiming to drive a new national tourism policy that will have sustainability at its very core. Ireland is very well placed to be a world leader in sustainable tourism, with our walkways, cycleways, greenways or blueways.
“We have also announced a new public holiday for February 1 next year. It's named after a female patron saint, and I hope it will turn into a celebration of women. Saint Brigid's Day, on the first of February, will help boost the off-peak season of tourism from next year onwards,” concludes the minister.