I have never wanted to visit the Isle of Man more than after speaking to Deborah Heather. AND I LIVE HERE. A sign that Deborah, who is the CEO of Visit Isle of Man, is doing a superb job. She sits opposite me having just dashed through the plummeting rain to get here, and still, she is brimming with positivity.
‘I’ve just come from moving into our new home at the Welcome Centre’ she tells me enthusiastically. Visit Isle of Man has moved and is now perfectly placed at one of the main gateways to the island, the Sea Terminal. ‘We’re in prime place to be more front-focussed, and we’ll have Biosphere Isle of Man and the Manx Wildlife Trust in the pods next to us which is brilliant’ she tells me. Tourists will now come off the boat and be welcomed with open-armed enthusiasm and guidance on all the different things they can do here during their stay.
But back to Deborah herself. She moved here from Devon and has been CEO of Visit Isle of Man for 19 months after previously being a volunteer on the board. ‘I wanted to be involved because I felt there was so much opportunity for the island. And, being from Devon, I’m able to see the Isle of Man through a visitors’ gaze rather than just a resident’s.’ She’s also Chair of the Tourism Society and on the Tourism Alliance Board.
Even if you don’t know much about Visit Isle of Man, you’d probably recognise their website. It’s full of gorgeous drone shots of the island and pictures of candidly happy people out doing fun things. It’s a hub of what’s on guides, local businesses and restaurants, cultural and historical tidbits, directions and booking forms for accommodation and travel. Basically, you name it, they’ve got it.
.jpeg?width=209&height=140&crop=209:145,smart&quality=75)
As well as bolstering local experiences and businesses and being incredibly resourceful (the mere tip of the iceberg) the organisation is creating fantastic partnerships and laying solid foundations that aim to build the Isle of Man’s accessibility and appeal as a brilliant tourist destination now and in the future. Visit has made a point of finding out what people are looking for in a holiday and how our many assets can cater to those needs. It’s led to the organisation undertaking more consumer marketing than anyone else on the island.
‘I think Visit has an opportunity to help people market themselves. I can see there's quite a lot of local businesses that are lost when it comes to doing this. 70% of local self-caterers on the island don’t have a website. Instead, they choose to advertise on the Visit Isle of Man website. Or people market to islanders but have no idea about marketing off the island. And I think that should be one of our responsibilities to deliver that for them,’ Deborah tells me sincerely before giving Curragh’s Wildlife Park as an example. ‘Great facility, that is run by an expert, a zookeeper, but there isn't really a commercial part of it. And I do think Visit Isle of Man can help offer guidance in these situations across the visitor economy.’
It's a hot topic for the Visit Isle of Man board, which has recently undergone substantial change with new members and the appointment of a new Chairperson. With it has come a change in culture, with Deborah keen to make the transition away from the typical civil servant administrator approach to proactively asking what Visit could do for the tourism industry, for visitors, and for stakeholders. But change can be tricky, and she says one of the easiest traps people fall into is only viewing the island through the eyes of a local.
‘I think the issue we've got on the island is we can be incredibly insular. The problem with tourism is everybody thinks they know it. But actually, when people look at it as residents they're not recognising the amount of opportunity we have. They may be disappointed that there isn't an Aldi and a Primark here and all of those sorts of things, but when a tourist comes to the Isle of Man, they come here to relax, and they're seeing it from a whole different perspective. After coming to the Isle of Man I've fallen in love with it, it's absolutely beautiful. But there are a lot of residents who forget what they have on their doorstep. They don't appreciate it, and that's just human nature.’
As Deborah said, not appreciating the things on your doorstep is easily done. As is ‘Grass is Greener’ mentality but turns out our grass is pretty darn green. And what we may not appreciate ourselves, people from around the world are taking note of. In fact, recently the Isle of Man was named in the TOP 10 EUROPEAN ISLANDS at the Wanderlust awards, alongside islands like Malta, Sicily, and Corsica. That is a BIG deal.
The issue of being blind to the brilliance hiding in plain sight in front of us is one best combatted by having some people on the board not from the island. If you have people from different markets working together, who have had different experiences, you’re going to be presented with a wealth of knowledge that would otherwise have gone untapped.
‘We’re like the countryside and coast to Liverpool’s metropolis. So, building a partnership with Liverpool is a brilliant way to get more publicity, and in turn have more people come over for the day or the weekend to have a break from the city. Claire is coming in with loads of Liverpool experience, and she loves supporting us because we're the perfect complement to Liverpool in terms of our offer.’
Deborah is talking about board member Claire McColgan, Director of Culture Liverpool. She was awarded a CBE for being one of the first people to test and put on big social-distanced events during the Covid pandemic, she got Liverpool the City of Culture title 20 years ago which has driven Liverpool's economy, and she organised Liverpool hosting Eurovision 2023. A good person to have in your corner to say the least. And the title of newly appointed Chairperson of Visit Isle of Man goes to Andrew Mackness.
‘He’s had careers in all sorts of things, including retail, investment, and developments’ Deborah tells me. ‘Andrew’s been living on the island for two and a half years, so he’s still seeing it from the outside in. And that’s really important to me, to have those different perspectives so we can continue to develop.’
It's easy to focus on what we don’t have, like Deborah said, but she believes it’s a mindset we need to change.
‘We’ve got to shift the focus from what we’re missing and look instead at what we’ve achieved and what we can develop’ Deborah goes on. ‘So certainly, the coastal path is a massive opportunity. One of our closest competitors is obviously the Lake District, and they have 18.3 million visitors a year. They have a lot of walkers off season, so that's a market we could target all year ‘round.’
To do that, Deborah tells me we need to home in on seasonal tourism and make it easier and cheaper to get here in the off months. Amen to that Deborah.
‘We should be mindful of trying to make it as easy and cheap as possible in the off season, because you almost have to buy business at that time of year. It would be a good start to introduce more flexibility for travel disruption.’
Moving on from travel to tourism itself, eco-tourism is making a splash, focusing more on well-being and the simpler things in life, which the Isle of Man can offer in abundance. Deborah has aspirations of mixing the old, slower pace of life with new technology, of treasuring the old and accepting the new in ways that could redefine tourism on the island.
‘We can use AI to direct people to places depending on their opening times. Let’s use the steam train as an example. With AI we can make a booking for you, we could recommend Thursday at 3pm because it’s quieter and there are fewer queues that time in summer. We could use AI to guide people around the island, it’d make things more accessible and be a great way of trying to get guests to experience everything that they can while they’re here.’
I asked Deborah if she thinks the island is still primarily known as ‘the place with the motorbike races,’ and ended up being pleasantly surprised by her answer.
‘According to our passenger survey, most of our visitors are doing stuff in nature. 60% say it’s what they're coming for. So, for those people, they may not appreciate the TT, but TT is our heritage and it helps put us on the map. It may be too dominant in certain ways, but we also don't want over-tourism here. We're in a prime position where we can build it, manage it, set it up, but not let it go too far.’
Personally, as someone who spent a lot of my youth yearning to get off the Isle of Man, Deborah has made me want to stay by helping me stop seeing the island through the eyes of a resident, rather than a visitor. I came away thinking ‘well, even if the weather isn’t always sunny, the island’s future is certainly bright in Deborah’s hands.’