The future of travel isn’t crowded hotspots or bucket list checkmarks
I picture quiet moments on Ireland’s rugged coast with a camera in hand, the Atlantic crashing against cliffs older than memory. I think about small villages where music spills from a pub and culture feels alive, not staged.
Moments like these remind me why I believe in sustainable travel.
Tourism should enrich visitors, strengthen local businesses, support communities and protect the landscapes that draw us in.
At this year’s eTourism Summit, I hosted a panel with international leaders reimagining what tourism can be. One of the most inspiring voices was Orla O’Keeffe, Head of Industry Digitalisation for Fáilte Ireland. Her team uses sustainability as the foundation for everything from digital transformation for small businesses to destination development that restores environments.
We recently caught up with her to talk about these ideas. Our conversation deepened my commitment to helping partners embrace tourism that lasts.
How does the V.I.C.E. model shape your digital and sustainability initiatives at Fáilte Ireland?
Fáilte Ireland uses the V.I.C.E. model, which stands for Visitor, Industry, Community, Environment, as a guiding framework for our corporate strategy and project planning. This holistic model ensures that any initiative balances the needs of visitors and industry with community well-being and environmental responsibility.
For example, in our digital initiatives, like the Digital that Delivers program, we focus not only on boosting tourism businesses’ online competitiveness (Industry) and enhancing visitor experience (Visitor), but also on dispersing visitors to lesser-known areas to benefit local communities (Community) and aligning with national climate goals (Environment). The VICE model essentially forces a whole-systems perspective; every digital solution or sustainability effort must deliver across all four pillars.
In short, VICE shapes our initiatives by acting as a checklist for balanced impact: a successful project must enrich the visitor experience, strengthen industry resilience, uplift host communities, and protect the environment simultaneously.
What does it take to shift visitors beyond traditional hotspots and keep them coming back to rural or lesser-known regions?
Getting people to look beyond the familiar hotspots isn’t something you solve in steps or with one quick fix. It only works when the pieces connect: the experience, the access, the branding and the community all reinforcing one another.
We’ve been focused on giving rural regions distinctive reasons to visit. In the Midlands, for example, old peat bogs are being turned into a network of walking and cycling trails. That shift gives visitors something fresh to discover and local communities a new story to share.
Those kinds of experiences need to be visible, which is why we put effort into strong regional brands. The Wild Atlantic Way did exactly that. It brought hundreds of towns and villages together under one identity and turned a stretch of coastline into a global touring route. That kind of visibility draws people further from the usual path.
Travel also has to be straightforward. Better signage, joined-up trail networks and clear digital maps make reaching hidden spots easier. We’ve also promoted public transport with campaigns like “car-free, care-free” to show that exploring rural Ireland without a car is not only possible but enjoyable.
Working with communities is just as important. Through our Champions annual training programme, locals are trained and supported so the welcome in a small village feels every bit as strong as in a big city.
The final piece is encouraging people to return. Festivals, cultural events and targeted off-season campaigns keep lesser-known regions on the radar year-round.When those elements align, the distinctive attractions, the visible branding, the easy access and community support, you see the shift happen. That is what has driven the success of Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands and the Wild Atlantic Way.
In your view, what’s the most compelling proof point of the Wild Atlantic Way’s long-term impact?
The numbers speak volumes.
Since its 2014 launch, the Wild Atlantic Way has brought almost 2 million more visitors a year to Ireland’s west coast, including 1 million international tourists. The Wild Atlantic Way is a spectacular coastal driving route that stretches 2,600km along Ireland’s western seaboard. This continuous driving trail links nine counties and three provinces – from the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal at the northern end, all the way down to Kinsale in County Cork at the southern end.
Visitors can expect dramatic ocean vistas, charming coastal towns and villages, and a rich tapestry of local culture and heritage at every turn. The route hugs the Atlantic coast and is marketed as the world’s longest defined coastal touring route, bringing together hundreds of scenic viewpoints and attractions under a single brand.
Along the way are 157 official “Discovery Points,” designated viewpoints or landmarks marked with Wild Atlantic Way signage, highlighting some of the most breathtaking sights, from famous natural wonders like the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare and Slieve League cliffs in Donegal, to lesser-known gems and beautiful beaches.
Visitors are spending money and sustaining local communities. It now generates roughly €3 billion a year for local economies. Perhaps most strikingly, this tourism surge has directly created an estimated 35,000 new jobs in these west coast counties, many in rural areas where livelihoods now depend on tourism sparked by the route. This job creation figure shows that it hasn’t just attracted one-off traffic; it’s built a whole new tourism economy that employs tens of thousands along the entire west coast of Ireland. Villages along the route that once saw a trickle of visitors are now humming with year-round guesthouses and cafes, and there’s a strong pride of place among communities who feel their unique culture (music, food, Irish language) is now appreciated globally.
The brand itself has near-universal recognition among travellers to Ireland, and visitor surveys consistently rank it as a highlight of their trip. But ultimately, the enduring economic impact, €3bn revenue and 35k jobs, is the clearest evidence that the Wild Atlantic Way wasn’t a fad. It is fundamentally rejuvenating tourism along the west coast of Ireland.
Why do you believe accessible, mobile-friendly websites are still a game-changer in 2025? What’s next beyond that?
A mobile-friendly website is often the first point of contact between a traveller and a small tourism business, making the “first impression” in 2025 more crucial than ever. Today’s tourists rely on smartphones to plan entire trips. If a website is slow, inaccessible, or unable to process bookings, the business risks being invisible to these potential customers.
Through the Digital that Delivers program, we discovered that 85% of tourism SME websites were substandard, with most failing to meet modern expectations for mobile usability and online booking.
By helping hundreds of Irish tourism businesses revamp their sites, making them responsive and accessible (AA standards), we enabled them to capture more direct bookings and significantly increase engagement.
The results were immediate: businesses saw a 10–15% annual growth directly attributed to improved digital presence.
A good website levels the playing field. A family-run museum or rural attraction can now appear just as polished and bookable as a major urban attraction. Accessibility features, such as text-to-speech and high-contrast options, not only foster inclusivity but also open up offerings to visitors with disabilities, broadening market reach while doing what’s right socially.
We often refer to the website as the “digital front door”: when it’s wide open, mobile-friendly, inclusive, and easy to navigate, it welcomes every guest. If it’s closed or difficult to use, people simply move on.
But the website is only the foundation. Beyond this digital front door, integration into broader travel platforms is key.
Once SMEs establish a strong online presence, the next step is connecting their inventory with major travel websites and online travel agencies (OTAs) like Google Travel, TripAdvisor, and Booking.com. This ensures their offerings are discoverable wherever travellers look, on booking apps, tourism portals, or through voice assistants. Thanks to our program, the number of attractions connected to online booking systems has tripled, rising to 34% with a target of 60%+ in the next few years.
Looking ahead, new technologies like AI-driven travel assistants and voice search are reshaping how tourists discover and book experiences. Increasingly, travellers might simply ask their devices for recommendations and bookings (“Find me a surf lesson in Clare this weekend”), relying on AI to pull data from online sources. We’re preparing businesses for this future by helping them structure their digital information (using schema markup and other tools) so it’s easily consumed by AI and voice assistants.
In essence, a modern, mobile-friendly website remains a game-changer for tourism SMEs in 2025. It ensures that even a small kayak rental in rural Ireland is as discoverable and bookable online as a major Dublin attraction.
The next frontier is to connect these digital storefronts to every possible booking channel and to prepare them for the evolving landscape, where AI, voice search, and new interfaces will drive travel discovery.
By guiding our SMEs through this transition, we’re helping them become not just great online hosts, but savvy digital travellers whose offerings are always within reach, no matter how the customer chooses to explore.
Can you share a real success story from the Digital that Delivers program that captures its impact on a local business?
One that comes to mind is Caherconnell Stone Fort & Sheepdog Demonstrations in County Clare.
Before joining our program, Caherconnell, an ancient ringfort attraction with a charming sheepdog show, was digitally quite underdeveloped. Their website was outdated and not e-commerce enabled, and they relied on telephone and walk-ins for ticket sales.
Through the Digital that Delivers programme, they built a new mobile-friendly website that included an online booking system, and they created engaging content (like short videos of the sheepdogs at work) to showcase online.
The results were almost immediate. Within a few months of launching the new site, they went from taking virtually zero online bookings to having most of their tickets sold in advance via the website.
This had a few knock-on effects: visitors who pre-booked often ended up spending more time (and money) on-site, for example, in their café and craft shop, because their visits were well planned and pre-paid online. It also helped to smooth out their visitor flow, enabling the team to better anticipate busy days.
The owner, Sean, told us that he was amazed to see bookings coming in from the U.S. and Germany; previously, those international visitors would likely only decide to attend if they stumbled upon it in person.
In terms of numbers, they saw a strong double-digit percentage increase in visitor numbers year-on-year, much of which they attribute to the increased online visibility and easy booking.
For me, Caherconnell’s story encapsulates what Digital that Delivers is all about – a wonderful local heritage site with passionate people, which, once given the right digital tools, transformed from a hidden gem into a thriving must-visit attraction. It’s incredibly rewarding to see their continued success.
What have you learned about the digital divide in tourism, and how are you helping close it for rural operators?
We’ve learned that the digital divide is real and persistent as smaller and rural tourism operators often lag behind in online presence due to constraints such as limited time, skills, or financial means to implement appropriate digital technologies.
Many rural tourism business owners wear multiple hats, making it difficult to prioritise tasks like optimising TripAdvisor listings or website SEO. Even basic gaps, such as running day tours without an online booking system, can limit business opportunities.
Prior to our digitalisation program, only about 1 in 10 Irish small attractions or day tour operators were active on online booking systems, leaving most rural operators unlisted on major travel sites or even through their own website, effectively cutting them off from many potential international travellers.
To address this, the Digital that Delivers programme was established to provide a hands-on, capacity-building approach, including financial support through grant aid for website development and booking software adoption.
Rural operators were also paired with digital mentors for step-by-step guidance through digital processes, such as setting up Google Business listings.
The Digital that Delivers program focused on supporting regional diversity by recruiting businesses from all destinations, not just the primary tourist hotspots. As a result, approximately one-third of previously offline operators are now active online with booking systems.
The program’s progress indicates that closing the digital gap requires proactive outreach and sustained support, as well as mentoring to assist with technological transitions. We’re starting to see a community effect, with peer support among operators increasing, contributing further momentum in addressing the digital divide.
How are you preparing Ireland’s tourism sector for the AI-powered future of search and travel planning?
A blend of innovative pilot projects, industry upskilling, and robust data initiatives are underway at Fáilte Ireland. We have set up an internal AI Council to guide these efforts, ensuring Ireland’s tourism stays ahead of emerging tech trends and that AI adoption is managed responsibly in line with the EU AI Act.
One flagship project is “Oisín”, an AI-driven itinerary builder we are piloting in Tourist Information Centres (TICs). Oisín can generate personalised trip plans in seconds, helping travel advisors in our TICs provide a richer experience for tourists looking for travel advice when in-destination.
We are using it to suggest tailored multi-day itineraries pulling from our open database of attractions and experiences and integrating with Google Maps for optimal routing. The pilot is helping tourist advisors save time and provide creative, on-the-spot recommendations.
Importantly, while we embrace AI, we do so cautiously. We emphasize accuracy and authenticity. With “Oisin,” a travel advisor remains in the loop to ensure accuracy before itineraries and plans are shared with visitors.
Another key pilot initiative is the “Visit Dublin Inspiration Planner,” an AI concierge that will debut as part of this year’s annual ‘Winter in Dublin’ campaign. It will ask visitors to the Visit Dublin site about their interests and then recommend tailored activities and events from hundreds of winter offerings in the city. Whether a user is into live music, food markets or museum tours, the AI will produce a personalised Dublin itinerary, helping visitors discover more niche experiences beyond the usual guidebook highlights. This will not only enhance the visitor experience but will also support local businesses and events by connecting them with interested audiences in real time.
Underpinning these customer-facing tools is a strong focus on data and insights. Fáilte Ireland has started leveraging AI for sentiment analysis, using Microsoft’s new Power BI Copilot to analyse consumer feedback and market research at scale. This allows the team to spot trends or issues faster than before. We are continuing to build out our official tourism APIs, essentially structured data feeds of attractions, events, festivals, etc, so that when AI search becomes mainstream, Irish tourism offerings will be well-represented with accurate data. We are investing in technology training, starting to upskill the sector about the potential of AI, and conducting in-person briefing workshops and online capability building. We want businesses to see AI as a practical helper, demystifying AI and encouraging them to trial new tools in a safe and responsible way.
Do we still need websites in the age of AI? What’s your take on that?
In my view, yes, websites remain important, though their function is shifting in the age of AI.
As AI-driven chatbots and voice assistants become more common in trip planning, they ultimately need reliable sources of information from official websites. A business’s website remains the primary source of truth about its offerings (hours, prices, features), and it’s also the place where conversions happen. I don’t foresee that going away in the near term.
What I do see is that users may interact with that content differently. Instead of a traveller manually browsing many websites to plan a trip, they might query an AI assistant, which in turn fetches content from those websites and synthesizes it. So, the website’s content is still crucial; it’s just consumed differently. We therefore plan to support our industry to adapt their websites to be AI-ready with content optimised for machine consumption, structured data and FAQs that answer common questions succinctly, etc.
In the age of AI, a website might not always be a human traveller’s first touchpoint, but it absolutely is the AI’s reference point, and it’s where the brand story lives in rich form. AI might give a summary, but interested travellers will likely click through to the site for depth or to finalise a purchase.
So, my take is: websites remain foundational, but businesses should also establish a presence across multiple channels to complement how AI might redirect traffic. Tourism operators should treat their websites as content hubs, ready to support both human visitors and AI agents.
There’s also an element of trust and quality; an official website provides authoritative, up-to-date information. In an AI-dominated discovery process, having that anchor is important to avoid misinformation. We’ve seen examples already of AI chatbots giving outdated information for tourism queries; maintaining robust websites is a way to combat that by continuously feeding the algorithms current data.
In summary, we still need websites today, but we need to augment them for the AI era. Websites need to work in tandem with AI, providing the verified content that AI tools deliver to users in new formats. Boosting SME AI adoption will require education, affordable access, shared learning communities, and integration with broader digital support programs. It’s not just handing them a tool; it’s building an ecosystem where using AI becomes as normal as using a website or a smartphone. With these structures, I’m confident we’ll see that percentage rise steadily in the coming years.
What’s one innovation or idea you wish more destinations would “steal” from Ireland’s playbook?
I would love to see more destinations adopt the holistic sustainable tourism framework that Ireland uses, the VICE model in action. In particular, the way we integrate community and environment into tourism strategies is equally important as visitor numbers.
For instance, our practice of developing Destination Experience Development Plans with local community input and including environmental management (like visitor routing to protect habitats) is something I think any destination could benefit from “stealing.” It’s an innovation in governance and planning more than technology, treating tourism not just as an industry, but as a shared enterprise with local residents and ecosystems.
Why is this impactful? Because it creates longevity and goodwill.
The Wild Atlantic Way’s success, for example, wasn’t just a marketing feat; it involved working with hundreds of communities along the coast to ensure they were on board and benefits flowed to them. I’d like to see more destinations take that blueprint: co-create tourism with your communities and build in green safeguards from the start.
This kind of model – where you measure success not only in arrivals, but in things like community sentiment and environmental health – is an idea worth sharing. It leads to more resilient destinations.
So, the “steal” is implementing a framework (call it VICE or whatever) that ensures every tourism initiative balances visitor delight with industry viability, community benefit, and environmental care. It’s working well for Ireland, and I believe it’s adaptable to any destination looking to achieve sustainable growth and strong stakeholder support.
Meet Orla O’Keeffe
Orla O’Keeffe is an experienced digital leader with a background in digital strategy, transformation, product management, and marketing. Her career spans industries including financial services, health insurance, FMCG, and tourism, as well as agency work. In her role as Head of Industry Digitalisation at Fáilte Ireland, she helps tourism businesses across Ireland embrace digital and AI tools to enhance customer experiences, improve operations, and draw actionable insights from data.
