Call for Ireland to unite tourism

Billy Hastings, chairman of Northern Ireland's Hastings Hotels Group, has called for the creation of a joint marketing body to promote the whole of Ireland as a single destination.

Dr Hastings said the present collaboration between the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and Bord Failte did not go far enough and that a joint body should be established with a single strategy for all business and tourism marketing outside the British Isles.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Irish Hotel and Catering Institute in Belfast last week, Dr Hastings said a joint body should also address training and standards issues.

He added that any strategy should serve the island and not just the tourist. For this reason Ireland must promote itself as a five-star destination rather than a budget resort, he said.

Dr Hastings told the conference that building work had started on the £25m Hotel Merrion in Dublin, a five-star scheme in which Hastings is a partner. The hotel is due to open in late spring 1997.

Competition in Dublin's de luxe market is heating up with the recent confirmation that the Fitzwilliam Hotel Group is to buy the shell of a property by St Stephen's Green for £5m, which British Land is to start redeveloping early next year. It had been thought the Doyle Hotel Group would buy the site.

Fitzwilliam, which also owns the Royal Dublin Hotel, the Country Club in Portmarnock and the Metropole Hotel in Cork, will spend a further £5m fitting out the hotel.