Galway’s strategy of developing a nearly all-year-round programme of events and festivals has been credited with establishing the city and surrounding county as a “happening place”, that is according to a new report launched this week by the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC ).
While praising the work of organisations such as Druid Theatre, Macnas, and events such as the Galway Arts Festival, Galway Film Fleadh, and the Galway Races for developing Galway’s international reputation and drawing crowds every year, the report, entitled New Directions for Tourism in the West, also warned that “greater innovation” was needed to attract more overseas visitors.
The report found that 9.8 million bednights were spent on the west coast by overseas holidaymakers in 2010. This compares with 15.1 million in 1999, a 37 per cent fall-off in demand. Last year just over half of all nights spent by holiday visitors to Ireland were spent along the west coast, down from two out of three bednights spent west of the Shannon 10 years previous. The report found that visitors now want more “unique and participative experiences” and that just promoting the scenery of the Atlantic coast was no longer sufficient.
Galway in particular was praised for its success in promoting itself as not just a destination located at the gateway to Connemara and to the Aran Islands, but home to a city which is a “happening place” due to the number of festivals and events that are held throughout the year. The success of this programme of events and festivals has been “instrumental in making the city one of the most popular destinations for short leisure breaks in the domestic market”. The report also said that these events have “generated publicity abroad which has popularised the city among overseas visitors to Ireland.”
The report states that this strategy “has been instrumental in filling the city’s 3,300 hotel rooms on many nights throughout the year, resulting in Galway hotels out performing the national average room occupancy and average achieved room rates in recent years”.
Apart from the big hitters such as the Galway Arts Festival, the Galway Film Fleadh, and the Galway Races, the report noted: “There are over 30 other festivals and events programmed annually. For example, Galway is staging at least 15 events between mid-September and mid-December this year. Continuous innovation and creativity is evident from the annual programme, with at least one inaugural festival being added to the calendar in 2011. A characteristic of events in Galway is the extent to which they are accessible to the public with many featuring outdoor spectacles of street art and performances.”
It was also noted that Galway’s reputation and experience in successfully staging festivals and hosting large numbers of visitors has resulted in many more major events looking to Galway, for example Ironman 70.3.
However the report also acknowledged that Galway’s festival and event strategy faces a number of challenges to its sustainability. These include: Sustaining an attractive annual programme, with the need for further innovation and creativity in designing and delivering freshness for existing events and unique differentiation for new events; a funding challenge as grant aid resources are curtailed and commercial sponsorship opportunities become more limited; attracting an increase in overseas attendances through attractive programming and effective marketing in the face of increasing competition; and ensuring that large scale events with large numbers of participants/spectators continue to be effectively managed to mitigate any potentially adverse environmental and social impacts.
