NI Tourism – our recent journey

The Club was delighted to welcome guest speaker John McGrillen, Chief Executive Tourism Northern Ireland who spoke about the developments in tourism within NI since 2012, the investments made and the future programme of major events, in which golf will play a large part. He gave a most interesting synopsis of what has and will be taking place, tracing the development from the early 70's, when nobody wanted to come, to the present day when Tourism is now a significant driver for the economy. The Giro d'Italia Cycle Race attracted 56m viewers worldwide and £12.7m. to our economy; the Sports Personality of the Year was an incredibly successful PR exercise as was the Police and Fire Games and the Irish Open golf competition at Newcastle helped lead to the selection of Portrush for The Open in 2019.