Making our mark or...rather, our dot

In my role as Chief Executive at ICC Belfast, Northern Ireland’s only purpose-built international convention centre, I’m used to travelling for business.

During transfers to airports and hotels, and any downtime (albeit limited) between meetings and conferences … a decent page turner is an essential travel companion.

Recently, I was at AIPC Annual Conference in Belgium and read about a great book called The Dot, one that I would enjoy reading to my nieces and nephews, when I saw an article about International Dot Day which was this week.

Yes, you read that right. International Dot Day. A whole day celebrating the humble dot – well, not quite.

The Dot, by Peter H Reynolds, is a story about a simple mark on a piece of paper, and ends up “a journey of self-discovery and sharing” – the tale of a teacher who helps a nervous student to believe in herself, trust her own abilities, and “make her mark”.

It became such a popular story that International Dot Day was established 10 years ago to celebrate “creativity, courage and collaboration”. And I wondered. Where’s my dot – no, where’s our dot?

Well, our dot – your dot and mine – it’s right here in Belfast, and it’s getting bigger by the day.

Our dot is what we can achieve when we work together. Our collaboration? It’s the impact we can make when we share the same goals and ambitions and collaborate to showcase Northern Ireland to the world. We’re making our mark at ICC Belfast is by championing Belfast as a business tourism destination. Business tourism is currently worth £80 million to the Northern Ireland economy, and we believe this could be doubled if we take advantage of the global trend of growth across the sector.

By collaborating with our partners Tourism Northern Ireland, Visit Belfast and Belfast City Council we aim to drive global businesses to Northern Ireland to host their events and conferences. When we attract out of state delegates each delegate is worth £488 to our local economy. Every single one. Our goal is to attract 50,000 delegate days every year.

Our collective aim is to establish Belfast and Northern Ireland as a world leading business tourism destination, and the incentive to do this is that we can boost the Northern Ireland economy by £40 million per year – suddenly making our dot look a little bolder.

If we are successful in this – we can help fill Belfast hotel rooms during the week, support our cafes, bars and restaurants too - and the ongoing ripple effect will positively impact the retail, agri-food and leisure industries.

This is what we mean when we say ‘when we win, everyone wins’ – that’s what makes us #TeamBelfast. When business tourists come to Belfast for the first time for a conference at ICC Belfast and see what Belfast and Northern Ireland have to offer, they often come back with their partners, parents, children and friends.

Northern Ireland and Belfast are resurgent. Every part of this city is continuously developing, compared to only a decade ago and so, now’s the time to make business tourism work – for all of us. To do this we need creativity, courage and collaboration and not only within our industry but across our burgeoning hospitality and tourism sectors and with the full support of government.

We need cathedral thinking from our political representation to recognise the long-term potential for business tourism in NI and put an infrastructure in place to support our growth, today, tomorrow and beyond. The potential economic, societal and cultural benefits are huge – but we must harness that potential.

Our dot is flourishing, and by working together, we can ensure it grows everyday, delivering for everyone across Belfast and Northern Ireland.