Sustainability
“Tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities”
Tourism Ireland has increasingly sought to act sustainably in recent years, both in our internal actions as an organisation and externally in positively influencing visitor and travel trade behaviour. The organisation has adopted the UNWTO’s definition of sustainable tourism: “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities”.
In 2018, Tourism Ireland adopted a suite of sustainable destination marketing principles that aligned our marketing activity with patterns of tourism demand, prioritising regional and seasonal distribution. In 2019, we instigated a review of all our office locations and the environmental practices in place in each of them, to establish and improve our sustainability practices.
In 2021, the Tourism Ireland board made sustainability a strategic priority for the organisation and we developed our first sustainability action plan. An internal sustainability taskforce was established to progress these actions.
Tourism Ireland has embedded sustainability at the heart of our new corporate strategy for 2023-25, with our ambition for growth built on the foundations of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. An updated sustainability action plan has been developed to align with this ambition, focusing on four key pillars:
- Growing our understanding of sustainability and what it means to the consumer and to the travel trade
- Activating sustainability within Tourism Ireland itself
- Activating sustainability in Tourism Ireland’s marketing communications and sales platforms
- Collaborating on progressing the sustainability agenda with our sister agencies, industry members, and sponsor Departments
A Tourism Ireland Board Sub-committee on Sustainability has also been established to provide strategic leadership in the area to the organisation. Tourism Ireland provides updates on our sustainability journey in our Annual Report. The 2021 Annual Report is available here.