New Community Tourism Initiative to Reach Out to Family and Friends Living Abroad

15/04/2014

Archived item. This item is published here for historical reasons. The information below may be out of date.

Press Release

Tuesday 15th April 2014

New Community Tourism Initiative to Reach Out to Family and Friends Living Abroad

South Dublin County Council is delighted to launch a new Community Tourism Initiative for the Diaspora which seeks to build on the legacy of The Gathering 2013. The Minister of State for Tourism and Sport, Michael Ring TD, officially launched the initiative, a joint partnership between Fáilte Ireland, IPB Insurance and the 34 Local Authorities, to provide an annual fund of €1m over the next three years to support up to 700 local community-based events and festivals each year around the country. South Dublin County Council will provide €30,000 over the next three years for this purpose.

Commenting on the initiative, County Manager Daniel McLoughlin said “Every year we support many festivals, facilitate forums and engage with citizens to support them in community events. We want to develop our communities to make them sustainable to live in, give people a sense of pride and belonging and encourage visitors and commerce.”

The Community Diaspora Tourism Initiative is a direct response to one of the clear successes of last year’s The Gathering where 5,000 communities mobilised to harness their Diaspora links for the benefit of local and community tourism.

The amount awarded will be based on the number of overseas visitors attending events. The minimum offered is €500 and the maximum €3,000. South Dublin County Council will seek applications for support from local community events from today, with a closing date of 9th May.

For further information including eligibility criteria and application form see www.sdcc.ie

Economic Development Department:

Ph: 01 4149000

Email: econdev@sdublincoco.ie

--ENDS--

Note to Editor

The Gathering was a year-long tourism initiative which succeeded in mobilising communities all around Ireland to invite Diaspora and friends to attend with, ultimately, over 5,000 special Gathering events taking place right across the country.

It is estimated that the project delivered at least 250,000 to 275,000 extra tourists in 2013 that would not have visited Ireland but for The Gathering.

During The Gathering, a total of circa 1,150 local and community events were funded under a special Community Fund allocated across the various Local Authority areas. This Community Events Fund was an important part of the Gathering programme with very positive results. While the individual amounts provided were quite small, it made an important contribution to many of the events to supplement the very substantial voluntary and community efforts on the ground.

Social Impact of The Gathering

Independent research conducted by the DIT School of Hospitality and Tourism found that The Gathering had a significant social and positive impact for those communities which engaged with the initiative. The key findings included:

The Gathering encouraged the development of events that otherwise would not have been organized.
It enhanced skills, capabilities and organizational structures of many existing events.
96% of event organisers believed their event to be a success.
The Gathering encouraged self-reliance and capacity building among many communities and encouraged them to focus on tourism.
53% of respondents said that the Gathering has helped ‘create a vision for their area that wasn’t there before’
47% of community respondents think there will be a long term positive impact
73% of community respondents believed that the Gathering made the community more aware of the importance of tourism.
Only 8% of event organizers were from the tourism sector.
The Gathering ‘gave ordinary people a platform to do extraordinary things’.
The Gathering resulted in a ‘pride of place’ and ‘self-belief’.
There was a strong family emphasis to the Gathering: ‘it was families who really benefited... it brought them together’