Trying to get involved for years!

Dear Stakeholder,

As the Government grapples with the serious economic problems confronting the country it is clear that tourism will provide a vital element of our recovery and that innovation will be a key component of its success. While other sectors of the economy have begun the process of measuring and improving innovation activities, our knowledge of innovation in Irish tourism is in its infancy. In order to improve our understanding of these issues we are working with Professor Jim Deegan and his colleagues at the University of Limerick. They are working on a project that aims to measure the levels of innovation across all sub-sectors in tourism with the firm objective of developing targeted support interventions to increase the levels of innovation.

There are four central elements in business innovation. The first element is “product development”, the second is “back office process”, the third is “managerial innovations” and the fourth is “marketing innovations”.

We are confident that you will have been involved in some way in one or all of these elements of innovation over the last three years. If so, we need your help to begin the journey of understanding the levels of innovation and how best we can support the individual sub-sectors with targeted initiatives. Even if you have not been actively involved we would still like to know as we can then begin the process of helping you with innovation interventions.

I strongly encourage you to get involved in this vital project as the output from the research will inform our strategy for innovation. Please click on the following link and Professor Deegan and his colleagues will be in touch in due course.