It’s not actually the Americans who are the holiday high rollers.
If you run a tourism business it’s the Dutch you want to see coming through the door.
They don’t come anywhere near as often, or in the same numbers, as our transatlantic cousins but when they do they like to splash the cash.
According to figures from Tourism Northern Ireland, their average spend per night is €160 – compared to US tourists who spend €98.
Mullingar-based Ken Delaney offers high end tours of Northern Ireland to American and Canadian tourists through his company Escape to Ireland.
The place “sells itself”, the interest in it is “massive”, fuelled by effective online marketing and the quality of its offering at places like Dunluce Castle, Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and the Giant’s Causeway.
He says he already has around 60 tours booked for this summer, the majority of whom want to spend some time in Northern Ireland.
Which tourists come north and how much they spend has been brought into sharp relief by a change in UK immigration requirements which took effect this week.
For now it affects non-Europeans, but it’s being rolled out to include all travellers.
British Govt say new regulation will help monitor movements into UK
Northern Ireland’s €1.5 billion a year tourism industry – which supports almost 6,000 businesses employing 70,000 people – is grappling with its potential implications.
Put simply, international tourists landing in Dublin and planning to visit northern attractions such as the Giants’ Causeway in Co Antrim, or the Titanic Exhibition in Belfast, will have an additional hoop to jump through.
Its clunky title is an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA).
It’s an £10 (€12) online application that the British Government says will help it monitor movements into the UK.
It runs in parallel with the so-called Common Travel Area – the long-standing British Irish Agreement which provides for unfettered travel between the two islands.
So Irish citizens, or third country nationals who don’t need a visa for UK travel and who can prove they’re permanently resident in Ireland, will not be affected and will not need an ETA to cross the border or to go to Britain.
It’s mainly tourists who’ll be stuck with it.
It sounds straightforward enough – fill in a questionnaire, provide a photo, contact and passport details and pay the fee.
They’re promising to have it processed in three working days or less.
But there’s been push back since it was first proposed.
And now that it’s a reality, there are concerns that it may have a chilling effect on cross-border tourism.
Northern Ireland’s main tourism spend – 38% of it – is by those coming from Britain.
Travellers from the Republic of Ireland and staycations by locals both contribute 22%
International travellers contribute 17% and most of them start off south of the border before crossing into the north.
ETA may turn away potential tourists
Industry figures have suggested that the added complexity of applying for the ETA may dissuade some from making the trip.
Judith Owens of Titanic Belfast said it risked “diminishing” Northern Ireland’s “global tourism appeal”.
Northern Ireland’s Economy Minister Conor Murphy of Sinn Féin said the change could have a “devastating impact” on Northern Ireland’s tourism industry putting at risk a portion of the £210m that international tourists contribute every year.
Tourist surveys have shown one in four from Europe and one in five Americans say it would put them off travelling.
Ken Delaney doesn’t agree. He says people taking expensive foreign holidays are not going to be deterred by a €12 charge.
“It’s a little bit of a headache but it’s kind of like me flying to New York there a month ago and having to fill out my temporary ESTA form and pay whatever, $20.
“I sent off an email to 11 different groups yesterday morning just to let them know and they’re like no problem, no problem, we’ll do that.”
He concedes that it may be more of an issue for European tourists who are more likely to fly-drive, be self-guided and working on a budget. He predicts that lots of them will be blissfully unaware of the requirement.
“I can guarantee you there’ll be tens of thousands of tourists who’ll be flying in on their own, that’ll be renting a vehicle and be heading up and it’ll be an issue, because I don’t think there is enough news about it.
“Me, who’s in tourism for well over ten years, I haven’t been flooded with emails or information about it.”
The legislation wasn’t drawn up with tourists in mind. The maximum penalty for “knowingly” entering the UK without a valid ETA is a fine or a short period of imprisonment.
That word “knowingly” is the get-out there, expect tourists to plead ignorance.
Questions remain over ETA enforcement
The other question is about how and where this requirement might be enforced.
The best guess is that in Northern Ireland it won’t be – and that’s for political reasons.
Tourism Ireland was one of the cross-border bodies set up under the Good Friday Agreement with the role of promoting the island as a single destination.
The whole point of the Good Friday Agreement and the post Brexit UK/EU arrangements was to maintain the free flowing movement of goods and people across a 480km long border which is, to all intents and purposes, now invisible.
There will be no physical checks at the border, no-one boarding buses to demand tourists’ ETAs.
But anything that adds friction to seamless cross border travel invokes feelings ranging from irritation to anger.
There have been calls for an exemption, for Northern Ireland to be carved out as a special case.
The UK may take a view on that, especially as the EU is about to launch a similar scheme at its borders.
What’s more likely is that it will remain.
Tourists who are told about it will most likely comply, those unaware will probably get the benefit of a blind eye.
