Irish Examiner view: Tourism needs its own economic champion
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Just how phlegmatic should we be about the performance of our tourism industry in 2024? Certainly, the weather has been bad, but that is not unusual.
What steps might we expect from any new government, whenever it comes, to make matters better?
Those close to the issue — in this case, the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation (ITIC) — have an arguable case that political structures mitigate against efforts to improve the impact of commercial development and recovery in this sector.
Shoehorning tourism, and its economic potential, in to a portmanteau ministry, which includes culture, the arts, Gaeltacht, sport, and media, has always seemed an unhappy compromise.
It is legitimate to ask whether a new approach is in order, one that will enable us to punch our weight in financial terms, and provide a counterbalance to Ireland’s economic reliance on some key overseas companies.
The pre-election manifesto issued by ITIC last weekend makes some well-rehearsed criticisms about the Dublin Airport passenger cap; niggardly levels of State investment; and the role of regional airports. It also asks for future labour-policy changes to undergo a “stress test” to evaluate their impact on small and medium enterprises before implementation.
However, the fundamental point is that, for the industry to be taken seriously, it needs an economic minister, not one whose attention is diverted by sports funding allocation, or media legislation, or policies for national galleries, or support for the arts.
“A Department of Enterprise, Tourism, Trade, and Employment would mean that the senior minister and departmental officials would treat tourism and hospitality opportunities and challenges with the appropriate economic rigour,” the manifesto states.
ITIC said that a dedicated minister for tourism also needs to be reinstated. Given the stuttering economic recovery since the pandemic, these demands should be taken seriously.
The rest of the world is taking notice of Ireland’s underperformance, despite the fact that the situation has been confused by the deployment of new metrics to measure growth.
The Daily Telegraph, citing World Tourism Organization figures, observed that visitor numbers are down by around 42% on pre-covid 19, declaring, in sepulchral tones, that the Republic’s post-pandemic recovery rate is the slowest in Europe.
Furthermore, it said, arrivals for the first six months of 2024 show only a small year-on-year increase of 4%. The number of Britons visiting, previously the largest inbound market, has fallen by just over 28% in four years. Flirting with the notion of a “tourist tax”, as Taoiseach Simon Harris did in Dublin, is simply a bad idea at the wrong time.
ITIC maintains an ambition to grow the value of the industry, which already employs 13% of the national workforce across 46,000 businesses, by 50% by the end of this decade, while simultaneously delivering its sustainability obligations.
However, this will require systemic reorganisation and a dedicated heavyweight champion with economic clout thumping the table inside — to quote the musical Hamilton — the room where it happens. And not, as seems apparent from the Budget 2025 outcomes, a matter dealt with under ‘any other business’.
Is end in sight for the flight boarding scramble?
If you were to complete an inventory of the irritating aspects of flying, it would be unlikely to be short.
Almost certainly included would be the behaviour of some fellow passengers, who imagine that the rules don’t apply to them.
And nowhere is that more frequently visible than when boarding.
Most of us will be familiar with watching other passengers trying to bluff or blag their way through the departure gates before their zones have been called, thus providing them with first dibs on limited overhead luggage space and allowing them to stake out their territory.
The phenomenon is so common that some staff even have a damning euphemism for the behaviour: ‘Gate lice’ is the unflattering description. Along with those who recline their seats, it is high on the annoyance level of all travellers.
Now, airlines are testing technology that they hope will bring an end to this anti-social behaviour. The plan is to visibly, and audibly, identify anyone who tries to shuffle through with an earlier group, forcing them to stand aside, and also be subject to some old-fashioned peer-group pressure and disapproval.
American Airlines has already rolled out the service at a number of US airports, to generally positive reactions, and is planning to extend it.
Carriers only have themselves to blame for the increase in people attempting to gain an advantage.
Prices for check-through luggage have risen and travellers are increasingly encouraged to carry their bags with them, to accelerate turnround times. Fare structures do little to encourage a mentality that we’re all in this together.
But sympathy for people trying to beat the system will be accompanied by a tune on the world’s smallest violin. And understandably so.
Bloody new chapter in journalists’ book of the dead
A new movie eulogises the work of Second World War photo-journalist Lee Miller.
Miller saw action during the London blitz, the D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris, and the discovery of the Nazi death camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
Her story epitomises what many people would regard as the role of a frontline journalist: Taking risks to deliver an essential truth.She described her approach as “a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you”.
Miller died at the age of 70 in the bucolic surroundings of her farm in the Sussex Weald.
But for many who have followed in her footsteps, particularly in the bloodiness of the Israel-Palestine war in Gaza, the reality is nasty, brutish, and short.
Israel, the nation that was created out of the rubble of the Second World War, is now a country that attempts to kill journalists, and, in many cases, succeeds — as it did yesterday, when Israeli air forces bombed, without warning, a media compound that had been used for up to a month by at least 18 reporters and cameramen from six media outlets, including Sky News, Al-Jazeera, and Lebanese broadcasters.
The Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said its camera operator, Ghassan Najar, and broadcast technician, Mohammed Rida, were both killed in the airstrike. Al-Manar TV, of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, said its camera operator, Wissam Qassim, also died.
The collection of wrecked chalets and vehicles clearly marked ‘Press’ forms part of the grim and expanding detritus of the Middle East.
The body count of those trying to cover the hostilities has risen to at least 128, according to the multi-national committee to protect journalists, which attempts to monitor the rising toll of deaths and injuries and discern truth in the fog of war.
This is the deadliest period for journalists since data gathering started, in 1992. Of the victims, 123 have been Palestinian, three Lebanese, and two Israeli.
Western journalists continue to be blocked from entering Gaza, and blocked from providing independent witness.
International law protects journalists who are regarded as civilians and the deliberate targeting of them constitutes a war crime. The current IDF campaign has killed more than 2,500 people in Lebanon and displaced more than one million according to authorities there.
“Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives — for their reporting,” said CPJ programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.
“Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth.”
History’s unforgiving gaze will fall upon Israel when this conflict ends.
The work of Lee Miller helped to define the narrative during the Second World War.
Many, many more testimonies will be placed in the book of evidence when an independent day of reckoning comes.
The work of dead journalists can still speak from beyond the grave.