Tourism body to "increase engagement" with Strabane district
After Visit Derry was questioned about promoting only 2 Strabane town events, the body has said it will take action
Derry and Strabane’s council-backed tourism body say they will “increase engagement” with organisers “across the city and district”, including in Strabane.
It comes after an article in this newsletter pointed out Visit Derry were only promoting 2 Strabane town events compared to 69 Derry events.
Visit Derry CEO Odhran Dunne gave a further response a day after I appeared on Highland Radio to discuss the findings.
Dunne said (with emphasis added):
“www.whatsonderrystrabane.com is operated by DCSDC [Derry City and Strabane District Council] and they, along with us do liaise with event organisers across the DCSDC area to include events as we are made aware of them. We will certainly increase engagement through relevant channels with event organisers from across the city and district to make them aware of the opportunity to promote their events on these platforms.”
On Visit Derry’s funding model, Dunne also explained:
“Although we are part funded by DCSDC, Visit Derry must generate and source additional income streams - this comes from our membership subscriptions across the North West, but also advertising/digital sales, promotional shows, ticket sales, retail sales, and some central government support via Tourism NI for agreed business activity.”
Dunne has emphasised multiple times in my correspondence with him that Visit Derry is a partnership between the council and local businesses.
Of course, Visit Derry members, and local businesses in the tourism business more generally, may not be evenly distributed throughout the council area - thus meaning that Visit Derry’s activities may not be evenly distributed either.
I will continue to monitor Visit Derry’s output in the coming weeks and months to see if their ‘increase in engagement’ will produce any outcomes for the Strabane area. If you want to keep up to date on this, you can subscribe to scottmoore.xyz.
In the meantime, I have approached Odhran Dunne again to ask who Visit Derry’s members are, to find out more about where member businesses are located in the Derry and Strabane area.
Further info supplied by Visit Derry
Some links to documents on Visit Derry’s website, providing info about the organisation, were broken. They have now been fixed and Visit Derry have advised the following documents are available: