North west tourism body promoting 69 Derry events - & only 2 in Strabane
Strabane ratepayers funding promo for Donegal and Limavady hotels
The council-funded body in charge of Strabane tourism is currently promoting 69 events in Derry city on its website - and only 2 in Strabane.
As of 27th September, Visit Derry, a partnership between Derry City and Strabane District Council and over 200 for-profit businesses, has 69 events in Derry listed under the ‘What’s On’ section of its website, up to April 2025.
Yet only 2 events are listed in Strabane town - the Alley Theatre’s Drama Festival in April 2025, Strabane’s Halloween celebrations. Another listing, Fulton’s Pumpkin Patch, is near Donemana, in the wider Strabane area.
And an event being held to celebrate Burns Night in Bready wrongly appears when a user searches only for events in County Derry - yet does not appear when a user searches for Tyrone events.
Two more Halloween events are listed at the Ulster-American Folk Park near Omagh - which is not in the Derry and Strabane council area.
Besides these, a Christmas event is listed in Raphoe, Donegal - and four events elsewhere in Moneymore, Co Derry - all of which are outside of the local council area.
The 2015 merger of Derry and Strabane councils has been scorned by many, from independent councillors to local residents. Before, Strabane councillors decided how Strabane’s rates were spent - but since 2015, residents have paid rates to a council where Derry has 70% of the seats.
A previous count on 22nd September examined 61 listings in Derry city. Of these events, 36 go on past 8.20pm - meaning Strabane residents cannot get the bus back home after, and must rely on a car, taxi or lifts to get there and back.
27% of Strabane residents don’t have a car (link opens Excel spreadsheet) - one of the highest rates of any town in the north. This statistic is similar in Castlederg, Newtownstewart and Sion Mills also.
Some events are one-off, or are only during later hours. Others happen over a period of a few days, with numerous slots and showings available. But in any case, people in Derry enjoy greater choice of when to attend than people in Strabane.
It’s even worse for Castlederg - the 3rd biggest locality after Derry and Strabane (outside of Derry’s suburban belt). If you’re in Derry and you want to get back to Castlederg by bus, the last bus is at 4.15pm on Monday-Saturday, with no way back by bus at all on Sundays.
Visit Derry is partly funded by Derry City and Strabane District Council. The council’s annual budget allocates £443,300 under the heading of ‘tourism’, with a further £1.9 million going to ‘festival and events’, £2.3 million for ‘museums and visitor services’, £1.6 million for ‘arts and culture’, and £956,000 for ‘marketing’.
The apparent imbalance will raise questions. The Sperrin and Derg areas, which roughly correspond to the old Strabane district, are 30% of the council’s population. Yet it is not getting 30% of Visit Derry’s promotional efforts.
A look through their tweets reveals that, up to September 22nd, only six Visit Derry posts on X/Twitter in the whole of 2024 explicitly mention and relate to Strabane, with one other post referring to the Sperrin Area of Natural Beauty.
By contrast, Visit Derry have made 25 X/Twitter posts in August and September alone, with 24 of them promoting Derry or the broader ‘north west’ - often vaguely. One post promoting the ‘north west’ is about local heritage venues - yet only 3 of the 16 are in the Strabane area.
Another post links to Visit Derry’s ‘summer offers’ webpage. This is now offline, but their ‘autumn offers’ page features a long list of hotels and resorts in Derry, and even in Buncrana, Burt (in Donegal) and Limavady - but seemingly none at all in the Strabane area. Visit Derry’s Facebook presence appears to be much the same.
Visit Derry have been approached for comment.
UPDATE 6:28PM: Visit Derry’s Chief Executive, Odhran Dunne, has responded saying the onus is on event organisers to submit event listings. He has also emphasised the nature of Visit Derry as a public-private partnership, dependent on match funding from ‘commercial or other revenue streams’.
Mr. Dunne’s response is as follows:
“Yes, as you have stated there is an onus on event organisers to upload their events onto the platform free of charge and we would encourage them all to do so for any tourism related events taking place in the city and district and wider North West region. The website is fluid and updated regularly in liaison with www.whatsonderrystrabane.com with the option for all event organisers to submit their event details https://www.visitderry.com/whats-on/submit-event - as more events are finalised by event organisers across the Derry City and Strabane District Council area these will populate on the website in due course throughout the year.
Visit Derry is a not for profit private-public partnership and a membership based model. Whilst Visit Derry is part funded by DCSDC it must also match any funding received with commmercial [sic] or other revenue streams to support tourism activity to increase visitor numbers to the city and district in a highly competitive tourism marketplace. Any business in the Derry City and Strabane District Council or throughout the North West region can commercially join Visit Derry and become a member as this supports our aims to attract and service more visitors to this beautiful part of the country.”
Visit Derry have been asked if they will contact Strabane event organisers to elicit more submissions to improve the balance. Their response is awaited.