Business focus as Visit Belfast welcomes new chair

Howard Hastings OBE, the amiable managing director of Hastings Hotels, was last month appointed as the new chairman of Visit Belfast, replacing David Gavaghan, who has chosen to focus on other commitments.

Funded and supported by Belfast City Council, Tourism Northern Ireland and the private sector, Visit Belfast (formerly Belfast Visitor and Convention Bureau) is the official tourism marketing agency for the Belfast city region. The organisation represents more than 500 tourism businesses and services across the area and provides an extensive range of marketing platforms through which they can promote their services.

Its new chairman, hotelier Howard Hastings, is well-suited to the role. A staunch advocate for Northern Ireland on the international stage, he is currently a director with Tourism Ireland and has just finished a six-year stint as chairman of Tourism Northern Ireland.

Speaking following his appointment, Mr. Hastings said that he believed this was currently “a very exciting time for Belfast” as investment continued to drive fresh growth for tourism.

And he continued with that theme when he spoke to LCN this month. Saying that he felt tourism in Northern Ireland generally was “in a good place”, he added:

“With its potential to bring overseas money into Northern Ireland, tourism is like an export business in Invest NI terms. And it’s on the rise.”

Mr. Hastings also said that following the elections in May, he would like to see the new Executive recognise the whole tourist sector and what it can achieve for the wider economy in Northern Ireland:

“If that recognition is there, if the government can put proper funding into the marketing of Northern Ireland, then it is for us to go out there, to show self-confidence and to make the most of that investment to secure jobs, events and visitors and to deliver on promises that we’ve made,” he said. “But we cannot expect the same upswing in the numbers of visitors to continue if it isn’t match by investment in the marketing of the destination.”

Business tourism is an area of particular interest for Mr. Hastings and he believes that the new £29.5m extension at the Belfast Waterfront Hall will do much to help plug seasonal gaps in Belfast’s business tourism provision:

“We measure our success in conference wins and we set a target two or three years ago of £45m in value for business tourism,” he added. “We expect to meet that target for conferences and events pledged in this financial year and I’m very happy with that.”

With his own background in the hospitality trade, however, he is also acutely aware of those issues that matter most to hoteliers, restaurateurs and licensees here. Not the least of these is the increasingly vociferous demand for reform of out-dated liquor licensing legislation.

Mr. Hasting told LCN:

“By common consent, the licensing laws here are not fit for purpose and it was a source of great regret to the hospitality industry that the draft legislation that was with the Executive and which would have gone a long way towards alleviating the worst bits of this did not go through during this current mandate.

“If we value tourism as part of the economy, then we really have to have licensing laws that are fit for purpose and we fully expect this will be fairly high on the agenda for the incoming government.”

Regarding the ongoing debate over Air Passenger Duty (APD) and its effect on tourism figures here, Mr. Hastings said that the evidence was clear that the tax had held back the growth of our domestic airports while the airports in the Republic had “grown like Topsy”.

“I am being taxed more heavily to fly from Belfast to London than to fly from Dublin to London and what that does is drive a fiscal wedge between Northern Ireland and GB,” he went on. “The imposition of APD on Northern Ireland is an unfair structure and it should not be a subject of debate. We are being taxed because we are part of the same system, but we have no choice to go by other means of transport. Would the government prefer that we all routed through Dublin?”

Mr. Hastings also said, however, that as he began his time as chair of Visit Belfast, he didn’t want to focus only on negatives. Remarking on the international success of attempts to capitalise on NI’s links to the Game of Thrones television series, he went on:

“I remember in 2012 that 75,000 cruise visitors came to Belfast,” he remarked. “Next year, we are looking forward to welcoming 150,000 and that’s before the advent of the new £15m cruise ship berth at Belfast Harbour. That’s great for our city and great for our retailers – and let’s not forget that the retail profile is a big part of Belfast’s real attractiveness. It’s also a perception thing. People see these big ships arriving in the city and they’re able to take some pride in that.”

However, Mr. Hastings did admit, tongue in cheek, that as a hotelier, he was “underwhelmed” at the idea of visitors bringing their own rooms with them.

His appointment as chair of Visit Belfast is for three years.