Adding Value to Rural Tourism in the Border Counties

Our rural tourism conference entitled ‘Adding Value to Rural Tourism in the Border Counties’ was held in the Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan attracted an audience of about 70 tourism businesses from throughout the border counties. There was an interesting line up speakers, as all were successful tourism entrepreneurs from Cavan, Monaghan, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Austria! The conference was chaired by Ms. Sammy Leslie from Castle Leslie Estate, whom also provided a short presentation on the developments at Castle Leslie.

John Toland of CMRD spoke about the Tourism without Borders Training Initiative.
John Toland Powerpoint presentation (download this in conjunction with the above presentation)

Each of the rest of the speakers provided the audience with an overview of how they have worked to develop their enterprises in the border counties and how through sheer determination that they have succeeded in developing rural tourism enterprises that they are proud of. Anke Morgonroth & Geraldine O'Reilly from Co Cavan provided a joint presentation which highlighted how they have developed and emphasised the importance of networking and consistently changing to meet the needs of the tourists. Norah Brown from Co Tyrone provided an insightful view in to how she, along with her husband developed their cookery school/guesthouse during the troubles and now are well respected throughout Ireland and the UK for their professionalism in the food and tourism sectors.

It was also interesting to get an international perspective on Rural Tourism, with Georg Gerharter providing a detailed presentation (with lots of wonderful pictures) on his region and tourism enterprise in rural Austria has developed. It was a delight to hear about all the organic farm produce which can be bought and/or consumed on his tourism farm.

Before the end of the day the group broke into a workshops of their choice - "Emarketing & how you can maximise your web-presence" Download E-Marketing Presentation (3mb) this workshop was run by Sandra Moody a professional web developer & trainer or "Networking is essential to the success of rural tourism besinesses" which was run by Michéle Zufferey a professional trainer with the National Agricultural & Rural Development agency in Switzerland.

The day overall was a success, with lots of networking going on throughout the day and many people taking many different experiences away from the day. All the conference delegates went away from the conference with a new found motivation and understanding that rural tourism in the border counties has a future through consistent networking and marketing through all the mediums available.

If you want to read more about what some of the speakers and conference delegates discussed, before and after the conference, please follow this link to our talktourism.ie discussion:Talktourism. Alternatively you can click on an individuals name to download their presentation.


*please note that some of the presentation have been modified slightly to allow them to be downloaded.*