New “Get Brexit Ready” tourism self-assessment website launched

Tourism businesses are being urged by Fáilte Ireland to “Get Brexit Ready“.  OSD Digital Agency together with Fáilte Ireland & Crowe Horwath have developed www.getbrexitready.com  to help Irish businesses assess the impact of Brexit. The website also provides assistance in providing practical advice in preparing for Brexit, limiting any potential impact on your business. OSD have implemented dynamic PDF generation in the system so that on completion of the survey,  the system will generate a PDF document specific to the self-assessment survery just completed. You can then download the report PDF for reference and generate future reports as things may change.

Threats of not being Brexit ready

The threat from Brexit to northwest and border county tourism businesses is already having a serious impact as they rely heavily on Northern Ireland & UK visitors. According to the CSO, tourism figures from January to June 2017, total overseas trips to Ireland were up by 4% on the corresponding period last year. Visitors from Britain were down by 6% while North American visitors grew by 22%.

In 2016 the border region generated a revenue of €286 million from international visitors, up from the previous year. This Fáilte Ireland statistic shows the importance of tourism to the north west region. The Irish Tourism Industry Confederation have said that Ireland as a whole had an income from sterling spending visitors of €1.48 billion in 2016.

What is assessed?

When UK sterling is strong, we experience a boost in tourism from these regions and the opposite effects can be felt strongly as we have experienced over the years. It’s a story we are very familiar with in the northwest, however, a potential hard Brexit may amplify that effect further.

With that in mind the Get Brexit Ready website asks a series of questions, that takes about 15 minutes through four key pillars:

• Brexit ready – assessing a business’ exposure to uncertainty.
• Battling for Britain – assisting your business in targeting the best prospects in the UK and identifying new opportunities.
• Spreading the risk – diversifying a business’s trade in other regions such as Europe, North America and China.
• Fighting fit – details on training and skills supports for tourism professionals, to cope with the challenges of Brexit.

Reports & advice

The results of the report are delivered in a traffic light styled assessment, indicating green, orange or red depending on your businesses readiness for any potential impact of Brexit. The system allows you to download the report which can then be used as a starting point in the development and implementation of your Brexit response plan, and allows users to complete the survey again in the future for an updated report based on any changes since the first survey.

OSD Digital Agency have worked with Fáilte Ireland for a number of years, administrating Business Support projects across Ireland. This particular project was proudly overseen by Technical Director; Victor Leonard.

We have provided marketing strategies and developed websites for businesses from our Sligo office for over 17 years in a number of sectors including tourism.