Strategic scope and broad goal: Support the industry to step change the environmental sustainability of tourism businesses to achieve government targets by 2030 (carbon emissions and energy efficiency).

Collaborative teamwork among FI Directorates: Sector Development’s Climate Action Division, and Economic & Industry Analysis Division; Regional Directorate’s four Branded Regions - Dublin, IAE, IHH, WAW; Product Development’s Environment & Planning division; plus strategic advisory partner EarthCheck, and other research stakeholders e.g. Atlantic Technological University (ATU).

Project specific: Establish a Monitoring and Reporting Process on the tourism sector against our emission targets.

TTP Pledge: Specific action your organisation intends to take:
Collection and analysis of robust data for tourism sector, establishing baseline data for benchmarks by sector and business type, and used in progress reports.
Key Activity: Identify and gather relevant data on the sustainability indicators identified at the regional level to formulate a baseline for assessing future progress.                             

TTP Pledge: Measurable result(s) of the action:
KPIs: Establish a clear programme for data collection in 2024 to actively manage across the strategy for delivering insights and for progressing the reporting under government targets for climate action. An information dashboard for reporting deliverables is under assessment in 2025.

TTP Pledge: Target date or frequency of the result availability:
Baseline data gathered for selected regional indicators by the end of 2024. Continued data gathering process for 2025-26.
By 2024 a clear programme for data collection was established and the reporting of baseline data has commenced.
By 2026 a monitoring programme will be established for the sector with two years of baseline data on key indicators recorded.

TTP Pledge: Planned investments inform what to be allocated for implementing this action:
2024 Budget = €20k 
2025 Budget = €10k

Project description:

Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority of Ireland, has developed a series of regional sustainable indicators as a framework to provide a balanced scorecard on regional tourism performance. The goal is for the indicators to be used across Ireland’s four experience brands i.e. Wild Atlantic Way, Ireland’s Ancient East, Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands, & Dublin. Overall, these indicators will link into emerging strategies within these regions and facilitate improved performance monitoring over time.

We have identified five categories of regional sustainable indicators built around the VICE model. The indicators provide a basket of ‘health’ indicators across five key areas:

1. Good Governance and Management Indicators
2. Visitor Indicators
3. Industry (economic) Indicators
4. Community Indicators
5. Environmental Indicators

The indicators are drawn from a range of data across existing Central Statistics Office (CSO) and Fáilte Ireland surveys, in addition to a range of external and new data sources (see Appendix).

Key Objectives

The purpose and intent behind the regional sustainable tourism indicators is to provide a replicable dashboard of measures at regional level which are representative of the broad sustainability performance of the tourism industry year-on-year.

The indicators were developed to provide information on Irish tourism’s sustainability performance through plausible and meaningful measurement parameters. The indicators need to address what can be measured immediately with readily available information, and those indicators that may require the development and use of new or additional data sources and measurement techniques. Indicators need to be easy to communicate and respond to the needs and concerns of different stakeholder groups.

We required a standardised means of assessing regional tourism performance based on sustainability metrics to facilitate a more cohesive and holistic understanding of cross-cutting issues in the four regions outlined. The project sought metrics that help to incorporate sustainability into destination management and investment planning which can help futureproof and inform better decision-making. As issues arise, they can be meaningfully tackled in a consistent and coherent manner with a clear framework in place.

Outcome

Regional characteristics have framed the approach taken for this project. While striving for comparability and building on international good practice, the indicator framework needs to reflect the local realities of the four branded regions and the county management districts on the island of Ireland. The set of indicators chosen represents a pragmatic set of measures based on existing data which is replicable and can be gathered on an annual basis.

Process

The process for deciding and selecting indicators included an initial list of 55No. measures which were shortened to a core list of 28No. indicators based on the data sets available following a series of workshops and interviews with key stakeholders.

We are building a user-friendly dashboard to make the agreed and final set of indicators both useable and insightful for ongoing decision-making in the Irish tourism industry. This is a live project, and we are identifying and gathering relevant data on the sustainability indicators at the regional level to formulate a baseline for assessing future sustainability progress.