Sustainability Policy

Belfast's Sustainability Journey

The importance of tourism to the city economy and Belfast to the regional visitor economy cannot be underestimated. Twenty-five years of tourism growth has welcomed millions of visitors to the city and been a catalyst for the regeneration of Belfast. It has established hundreds of new enterprises for our economy, thousands of jobs for our residents and created opportunities for our communities and neighbourhoods. Tourism has played an important part in enriching the culture, vibrancy of the city and the quality of life for all the people who call Belfast home.

With the launch of Belfast’s first resilience strategy and climate plan, the city has set an ambitious goal ‘to transition to an inclusive, zero emissions economy in a generation.’ The plan sets out thirty transformational programmes to future-proof our city for generations to come, a commitment to inclusive and sustainable growth and a plan to make Belfast climate resilient. As the city’s Destination Marketing and Management Company, Visit Belfast continues to play a critical role in supporting Belfast’s ambition through leading delivery of sustainable tourism in partnership with Belfast City Council and our industry.

Visit Belfast

Visit Belfast’s ‘New Horizon’s strategy 2024-2027’ and 2024-5 business plan is focussed on enhancing our efforts to:

Grow the visitor economy in the Belfast city region in an inclusive and sustainable way
Position the Belfast city region as a front of mind destination for leisure visits, business events and days out;
Enhance the experience for visitors by showcasing Belfast city region as a diverse and welcoming destination with a unique neighbourhood offer and;
Sustain its approach to championing sustainability, pioneering powerful impactful initiatives, inspiring sustainable choices amongst visitors and clients – and telling Belfast’s sustainability story.

This is reflected in our purpose:
“To create and service visitors for Belfast and Northern Ireland in order to generate economic benefit and inclusive growth, creating jobs and prosperity for the city region, enabling Belfast to become a more sustainable place to visit, meet and live in.”

Our sustainability policy

Our 3-year business plan and the 10 commitments outlined in our Sustainability Policy define our sustainable and regenerative vision for tourism in Belfast.

Visit Belfast will work to:

Reduce the environmental impact of our business and look for better, greener and more sustainable ways of working
Build sustainability capacity within Visit Belfast and empower our employees
Support and improve employee health and wellbeing
Procure goods and services more sustainably
Champion sustainability within our industry – encouraging collaboration, catalysing innovation and improvement
Promote sustainable choices and experiences and positively influence the actions of visitors
Work with our B2B clients (event organisers, tour operators and cruise lines) to make sustainable business easy
Generate and manage year-round visitors to Belfast in a way which is sensitive to the environment and communities
Maximise the social and economic impacts of Visit Belfast’s activities – to deliver sustainable and inclusive growth
Promote and develop Belfast as an accessible, inclusive and welcoming destination for all

Download the policy

Our ten commitments are aligned to eight of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals below:

Management, Delivery and Performance

We will ensure delivery on our commitments through the following process:

Agreeing an annual sustainable action plan as a key part of Visit Belfast’s business planning process with agreed targets and KPIs, to be approved by the Board with performance reports at least twice annually on progress.
Adopt a Climate Action Plan for the organisation and publish our carbon footprint annually.
Establishing a sustainability team within Visit Belfast to support delivery of the sustainable action plan and delivery on policy commitments.
Ensuring that all employees understand the policy, receive sustainability training as part of their role within Visit Belfast and are encouraged to be champions of sustainability across the organisation.
Publishing our sustainability policy on our website and communicating it with all key stakeholders, industry, clients, suppliers and residents.
Reviewing and updating our policy regularly to ensure continuous improvement of our sustainability efforts. Next update due September 2025.
Participate in the annual Global Destination Sustainability Index to measure sustainability performance at a destination level (environment, supplier, destination management and society).
Maintain our Green Tourism Gold Accreditation which measures sustainability performance at an organisation level (Visit Belfast).
Agree an annual DEI action plan in line with the Visit Belfast Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policy.

This plan is underpinned by our sustainability strategy and sustainability policy which was approved by our Board in June 2021 and published. This was informed by consultation with Belfast City Council, Tourism NI, Our regional tourism partnerships, Belfast’s Sustainability and Resilience Board, NITA, NIHF, Eastside Partnership, Visit West Belfast and over 400 partner businesses and stakeholders. Our plans were launched at a Sustainable Belfast event in June 2021 and progress is annually reported at our business plan launch in May of each year. Sustainability and impact performance is regularly reported to our operational committee and Visit Belfast Board.

Measuring Progress, Sustainability & Impact

To ensure accountability and genuine impact, Visit Belfast rigorously tracks progress against our three-year business plan and the 10 sustainability commitments outlined in our Sustainability Policy. This approach allows us to demonstrate transparency, build trust with stakeholders, and ensure that our actions reflect our values—not just in principle, but in measurable outcomes

Read Visit Belfast’s Full Performance Report for 24/25