The Challenge

The COVID-19 lockdowns created a unique opportunity for Visit Belfast to pause and re-evaluate its tourism strategy. The primary challenge was to align the recovery efforts with sustainable and zero-carbon tourism practices.

The Solution

The GDS-Movement collaborated with Belfast City Council and Visit Belfast to develop and implement a comprehensive regenerative tourism strategy and sustainability action plan. The key deliverables included:

• Benchmarking with the GDS-Index: Evaluating Belfast’s performance against global standards for sustainable tourism.
• Strategy Development Workshops: Conducting workshops to craft a forward-thinking, regenerative strategy for the visitor economy.
• Impact measurement: Developing the DMO’s capacity, and guiding the development of social, economic, and environmental indicators and a basic measurement framework.
• Consultation with Key Stakeholders: Engaging stakeholders to gather insights and ensure their buy-in for the new strategy.
• Management and Team Training and Coaching: Providing training to enhance the skills needed for implementation.
• Creation of a Certification Strategy: Developing a strategy for obtaining relevant sustainability certifications.
• Launch and Communications Support: Assisting with the strategy’s public launch and ongoing communication.

Results

The implementation of the regenerative tourism strategy led to significant improvements in Belfast’s GDS-Index ranking. The destination moved from second-to-last to number 19 in 2021, and further improved to number 9 in 2024. The are the second highest performing destination for DMO performance.

Outputs Delivered

• Comprehensive regenerative tourism strategy and policy.
• Sustainability action plan with clear, actionable steps.
• Enhanced stakeholder engagement and support.
• Sustainability performance report 2023 and 2024.
• Ongoing training and development for the management team.
• Raised over £44,675 raised for local food banks and homeless charities.

This case study demonstrates our capability to deliver complex, sustainability-focused tourism strategies that yield measurable improvements in performance and stakeholder engagement.