Special Report by Iain Gray
HAS the gold coast lost its lustre for tourists?
That’s the question being asked this week after new statistics put Ards and North Down in the bottom half of league tables for overnight visits and tourism cash.
The stats seem to show that people regard the borough as a good place to visit their family or catch up with friends, but not somewhere worthy of staying for a few days’ holiday.
In the minds of visitors, the area is more like Lisburn in that respect, despite council attempts to sell Ards and North Down as a tourism hotspot.
In recent years, campaigns have plugged the landscape and coastline of the borough, as well as its award-winning food and drink offerings, its arts festivals and early Christian heritage, all of which local officials think would make a good draw.
The new statistics show that last year, the borough hosted around a quarter of a million overnight stays – putting Ards and North Down in seventh place out of 11 council districts, and equalling less than one-twentieth of the total number of tourist trips in Northern Ireland.
Of those visitors, 51% came to see friends or family; that’s level with Lisburn and Castlereagh, which has never been considered a hotbed of tourism, and joint second-highest behind Antrim and Newtownabbey.
Just 30% of the visits were for holiday or pleasure purposes. On the north coast of Northern Ireland, however, 74% of visitors were holidaymakers; in neighbouring boroughs, 49% of Belfast’s visitors and 48% of Newry, Mourne and Down’s were people coming for pleasure purposes.
The quarter of a million visitors brings Ards and North Down’s tourism sector back to pre-Covid levels, but it’s still hugely down on 10 years ago.
In 2013, 342,000 people stayed in this area; 2014 proved the high-water mark of the last 10 years, with 443,000 visitors.
Last year, tourists spent £52m in Ards and North Down; again, that’s seventh place, and comprises less than one-twentieth of the £1.2bn spent provincewide.
The figure means the local tourism take is less than a tenth of the money spent in Belfast, and approximately one-quarter of the amount that came into the Derry City and Strabane area.
