Usage of Irish Seas and Coastal Ecosystems for Tourism Development (UISCE Tourism)

Project Start date: April 2020

Project Duration: 5 Years

Funded by: Marine Institute (MI)

Funded Amount: €375,631

The project is carrying out a spatial analysis of tourism and recreation activities in marine and coastal areas in order to ensure they are considered in terms of Ireland’s National Marine Spatial Plan. Using business surveys, marine leisure enterprises are being linked to the coastal and marine features that they use to produce data and maps of not only marine tourism and leisure enterprises but also the key ‘blue’ assets, beaches, piers, cliffs, etc. that are used by such enterprises.

The project is also examining, through a case study, local community engagement with a key marine tourism initiative in order to examine what spill over effects are accrued from such marine related tourism projects and the lessons that may be learned to build other successful social enterprises based on ‘blue’ assets.

The project is also undertaking an international benchmarking desk study of popular marine tourism activity locations with similar climatic conditions to Ireland in order to identify possible new product offerings, new marketing approaches or alternative approaches to delivering existing marine tourism offerings.

Outputs: 

• Cawley, M., Deely, J., and Hynes, S. (2023). Sustainability in marine and coastal tourism- an integrated approach, Valentia Island. 13th Annual Marine Economics and Policy Research Symposium, Porter Shed, Galway, December 13th

• Hynes, S., Cawley, M., Deely, J., Norton, D. (2023). Alternative approaches to measuring coastal and marine tourism. 13th Annual Marine Economics and Policy Research Symposium, The Porter Shed, Galway. December 13th.

• Cawley, M., Hynes, S., Deely, J. (2023). Sustainability in coastal and marine tourism: exploring the possibilities of de-growth. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Denver, Co., 23-27 March 2023 (online presentation).

• Deely, J., and Cawley, M., (2023). Heritage tourism in small island communities and the need for strong business and social networks: a tourism innovation system. Sustaining, knowing and living the Blue. Coastal communities as places to belong across generations. Trondheim, Norway, June 15th - 16th.

• Deely, J., Hynes, S. and Cawley, M. (2023). Modelling domestic marine and coastal tourism demand using logit and travel cost count models. Economic Analysis and Policy, 77, 123-136
  
  
•  Deely, J., Cawley, M. and Hynes. S. (2022). Review of the evolution of Irish marine and coastal tourism strategies. SEMRU Working Paper Series, 22-SEMRU-WP-01
  
  
• Deely, J., Cawley, M. and Hynes. S. (2022). Irish Marine and Coastal Tourism Strategies Database. SEMRU, University of Galway SEMRU_UISCE_database

•  Deely, J., Hynes, S., Cawley, M. (2022). Overseas visitor demand for marine and coastal tourism. Marine Policy, 143, 105176.

• Prof Stephen Hynes
• Prof Mary Cawley
• Dr John Deely