Focus on Recent Capital Developments
Today’s travellers seek out authenticity and to be emotionally connected with any experience they undertake in their chosen destination.
Tourism NI through, the provision of its capital tourism programmes, seeks to provide the tourism industry with a launch pad to improve and revamp their tourism products and experiences to make them suitable for the modern visitor from both national and international markets.
Each month, this page will showcase a project which has recently benefitted from receiving financial assistance through Tourism NI.
Immersive Technology Programme
In November 2018, Tourism NI launched a pilot programme of the Immersive Technology Programme. This programme sought to inspire technological innovation within the tourism industry.
Specifically, applicants needed to demonstrate show how the proposed investment would deliver on one or more of the following visitor experience outcomes:
Enhanced visibility and accessibility of product (including where appropriate pre-visit and season extension)
- Enhanced visibility and accessibility of the product (including where appropriate pre-seasons and season extension)
- Improved visitor experience
- Improved story telling
- Improved customer satisfaction
The key objectives of the Fund, in line with the Tourism Strategy to 2030, were
- Increased visitor spend
- Increased visitor numbers
- Increased dwell time
- Increased employment opportunities
Financial assistance was available between £25,000 and £500,000 for successful applications with up to 30% available for Private Sector organisations and 50% for public and third sector organisations.
Audio Improvements at Belfast Cathedral
Financial Assistance offered: £25,000
Belfast Cathedral, known locally as St Anne’s, is a Cathedral of the Church of Ireland. Belfast Cathedral considers itself to be a relatively ‘new’ visitor attraction in the city, but with the potential to increase its visitor numbers quite significantly over the next few years. The Cathedral’s history and items of interest provide visitors with a treasure trove of art, culture and music.
Representatives of St. Anne’s Cathedral and Tourism NI at the launch of the multi lingual audio guides. Photo reproduced courtesy of St. Anne’s Cathedral
An application was submitted to the Immersive Technology Programme in order to strengthen the tourism offering giving visitors more opportunities to immerse themselves in the history of its walls through voice and music as well as a wider variety of themes and stories relating to the Cathedral.
Belfast Cathedral’s aim was to become a more open, accessible, engaging and user friendly visitor experience allowing the cathedral to tell the story about its place within the city of Belfast leaving visitors with a real sense of what Belfast Cathedral is and has been over the last 300 years, and the important role it has played within the wider city and to its residents.
The provision of a multilingual audio guide to the Cathedral’s offering will mean that visitors to the Cathedral will, at all times of the year, be given ready access to the Cathedral’s story. The guide is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Mandarin and Italian. The English speaker has the added quirk of being narrated with a Belfast accent providing added authenticity for the English speaking tour.
The Cathedral’s Tourism and Events Manager explained the benefits the addition of this product has brought to the Cathedral:
“We are delighted to have received the funding for this project, without which it simply wouldn’t have been possible to create this fantastic multilingual guide for our beautiful cathedral. It is fantastic to be able to offer an engaging experience for our visitors, particularly those who are coming from overseas who previously would not have been able to connect with our space in the same way.”
The audio guided funded by Tourism NI is just one of a number of recent improvements to the Cathedral to enhance the visitor experience.
Belfast Cathedral is normally open to visitors through the year, for opening hours and further information, please click here. Please note, you may need to contact the Cathedral directly as there may be a change to normal opening hours and entrance requirements.
Want to know more about how Tourism NI’s capital funding programmes can assist your visitor experience?
Unfortunately, Tourism NI does not currently have any open calls for financial assistance.
If you would like to keep up to date with new capital programmes to be launched by Tourism NI, please complete the form below to request your details be added to Tourism NI’s Register of Interest.