Tourists wielding electronic devices and listening to podcasts will soon
become a feature of the formerly mean streets of the Shankill and Falls
Roads in Belfast.
Free downloadable audio guides will be available from the local tourist board
website from next month for the first time. Visitors will also visit the
city's tourist information centre, where devices can be rented for £8 a day.
There will be six podcasts covering different parts of Belfast, each
suggesting a walking route. The tourist board hopes that they will encourage
visitors to see Northern Ireland's capital by foot, rather than using
tourist buses and “taxi tours”.
Mary Jo McCanny, director of visitor servicing at the Belfast Visitor and
Convention Bureau, said: “For example with our Shankill podcast, you will be
able to start from outside City Hall and then follow directions to get to
the Shankill Road. From there there will be 11 attractions to see.”
These will include the murals (many devoted to paramilitary organisations),
and the Peace Wall, which still divides loyalist and nationalist areas,
where tourists are invited to add graffiti in support of the peace process
in the province. Other stop-offs will include St Matthew's Church, the house
where the artist Frank McKelvey was raised, the Shankill Memorial Park and
the Bullaun Stone - an “old wart well where people used to go for cures of
warts”, McCanny said.
More than 1.3 million foreign visitors stayed overnight in Belfast last year,
up from 200,000 in 1998, when the Good Friday agreement was signed,
beginning the peace process exactly a decade ago next month (April 10).
The podcast will also cover the whole city. New attractions such as the
Titanic's Dock and Pump-House attraction, which explains how the Titanic was
built, and the Belfast Eye observation wheel next to City Hall, will be
included.
On Shankill Road the podcasts will also lead people to a tourist information
centre, due to open in July. The centre is to have heritage displays
highlighting former local industries such as linen-making, engineering and
working on the construction of the Titanic.
Postcards, T-shirts and arts and crafts made by locals will be on sale, said
Roz Small, of the Greater Shankill Partnership. “We're hoping we will
attract independent travellers,” she said. “It's an issue that many tourists
take buses and taxis and don't actually get out in the area.”
She said that new murals meant that less than half now have paramilitary
themes, and that new signposts should also help visitors to find their way
round.
Details: www.gotobelfast.com, www.shankilltourism.com
