The Summit http://www.adventuretravel.biz/connect/summit turned out to be an eye opener and hopefully the lessons learned can be put to good use over the next few months.

I was accompanied to Scotland by Karen Buchannan from the West Cork Hotel who was the other West Cork representative. It was a week of networking, talks, presentations and learning. Karen and I decided to divide our time and we each attend different talks and networking session. This turned out to be a good idea and each evening we swapped notes and findings and designed a strategy for the next day.

Here are some of our findings:

Adventure Tourism is on the increase and is fast becoming part of the main stream market

People choose a destination because of the quality of the adventure, the history/culture, the environment, interaction with local communities, nature watch – and Ireland has all of these.

Adventure travellers are more educated and have higher incomes

The Asian & Indian market are about to explode, Asia by 2020 will provide 1/3 of all arrivals

The World Adventure Travel Summit is in Chipias, Mexico in October 2011 and Ireland needs to be there. But…..

Our conclusions were that we need universal thinking about Ireland rather than parochial thinking and that Ireland’s location as an island with a temperate climate needs to be highlighted, and that the existence of sustainable and experiential tourism in Ireland needs to be highlighted.