Editor's note: As a destination, Ireland doesn't exactly have to paint a picture of its appeal. The images of its ancient castles, fairy-tale settings, and endless pubs are familiar even to those who've never gotten closer than a postcard. And plenty of people have purchased those postcards on Irish soil: In 2006, the number of trips to Ireland by overseas visitors rose by 10 percent to 7.7 million. j The Irish hospitality industry would love to capitalize on those positive numbers with more international meetings. What has stood in its way is the glaring lack of a rather essential component: an international convention center. A while ago, Convene Contributing Editor Ginny Phillips visited Ireland and filed this story. We've waited for the right time to publish it. Now seems fitting. In April of this year, Ireland's Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, announced that the contract for the provision of a National Conference Centre in Dublin has been awarded to Spencer Dock Convention Centre Dublin Ltd. The Minister said that he was delighted that after so many years of planning, Ireland's National Conference Centre was now about to become a reality. Here is the story of the country's long and rocky road to getting a conference center to call its own.

While a collection of hotels and other private venues in Dublin hold meeting space, no purpose-built facility has existed for large conferences. Several beautiful venues around the country can hold hundreds as opposed to thousands - but Dublin, surely the most logical choice for large international groups, remains without a prime venue. It's a missing piece that has been costing the industry ... and the country. Dublin is the only European capital city without such a facility, and the Dublin Chamber of Commerce estimates it has lost $75 million in economic activity each year.

The Irish Hotels Federation anticipates that a center holding at least 5,000 would attract 50,000 more visitors per year than the current 120,000 meeting attendees. Because a conference attendee spends an average of $1,800 each in the country during their visit (50 percent more than the average tourist), the economic impact is significant. Plus, one in three conference delegates extends their stay in a host country, which would mean dividends spread across the Emerald Isle, not just the capital city.

Derailed Plans

The tourism industry, in particular the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and the Irish Hotels Federation, has pushed hard for an international convention center for the past decade. But the plans continue to be derailed. Ireland got close to building a center on Dublin's docks in 2000. The effort received European grant funding and local planning consent, but after an appeal was lodged related to the size and scope of the proposed development, ultimately a national body didn't consent to the entire project. A hotel's efforts to create such a center a few years later also failed.

Then in early 2004, the Irish government issued a call for bids on the contract for a national center. By the May 2005 deadline, two consortiums had submitted proposals, and the winner - subject to government approval - was supposed to be announced in July 2005, with completion of the facility scheduled for 2008. Once again, however, the plot took an unwanted twist: A legal issue arose over the summer, requiring the involvement of the attorney general and delaying any announcements until late September. In mid-October, Minister O'Donoghue said the panel's evaluation of the bids had gone to the conference centre steering group.

"I expect a provisional preferred tenderer will be designated shortly," O'Donoghue said. Negotiations would then take place and a decision was likely to be brought to government early in 2006, he said. The announcement was actually made in April 2007.

Guidelines for the proposal dictated specifications from the number of seats in the auditorium - at least 2,000 - to the minimum number of square meters for banquet and breakout space. As for location, the applicants proposed building on sites over which they each respectively had control. Both sites are central Dublin locations, quite close to each other, with one being the same dockland area talked about in 2000. The Spencer Dock on the north side of the Liffey was eventually chosen as the center's site.

The proposed center would allow the city to handle conventions of up to 5,000, whereas multiple venues at the moment can handle no more than 2,000 comfortably.

Delays Continue Despite a Tourism Boom

"To say that the conference centre is a saga is an understatement," said Ronan Flood, director of Advantage ICO, a destination management company. "Undoubtedly, it would have a massive economic benefit to Dublin and Ireland - we cannot even bid for a lot of international meetings without a purpose-built convention centre."

The delays have been all the more frustrating to industry professionals because of the overall tourism boom. Tax from the tourism industry already amounted to more than $3 billion per year for the Irish government in 2005. Visitor numbers continue to climb, increasing 8.5 percent between 1999 and 2004 to 6.4 million. Passenger traffic at Dublin Airport has increased 34 percent since 2000; during 2004, the airport opened up 35 new routes.

But all that traffic doesn't include a good many attendees from large-scale meetings.

"There is a lot of pent-up demand for Dublin, but many associations and corporations want an under-one-roof solution and a purpose-built building," said Jean Evans, CEO of the Dublin Convention Bureau. "So we don't get to the table and just aren't considered for certain businesses, even though the rest of the conference facilities can hold big numbers,"

It all raises the question of why this journey has been so endless. In part, red tape hasn't helped. The Irish government pushed the idea of building a convention center through a public-private partnership model. That model involves a private sector company designing, financing, operating, and maintaining the center, while the government commits to making certain payments for the availability of the center. After a period of time - multiple decades in this case - the center reverts to public ownership. With its intricate planning, the process for such a partnership is a very complex one.

"It is a competition for a start-off, and there is a requirement on the civil service to ensure that all the 'i's' are dotted and the 't's' crossed perfectly," said Richard Bourke, who served as president of the Irish Hotels Federation at the time of this writing. Getting Buy-in But there's also a simpler explanation.

"It has taken a long time because I don't think the will was there," Bourke said. "I think the reasons behind it were understood, but there just wasn't a will to do it."

The fact that there wasn't a will to do it didn't mean the benefits weren't crystal clear to the public and the government.

"People seem to realize the wider scenario and the industry in general has been pushing for many years for a centre to be built," Evans agreed. "The wider economic impact to Dublin and Ireland in general is monstrous, and I think still much bigger than people think."

The hospitality industry has taken some very formal steps to promote that potential economic impact. The Association of Irish Professional Conference Organisers was founded in February 1999, and the desire to take Dublin to the next level of convention business led in part to the founding of the Dublin Convention Bureau in 2003. "Consultants felt that there had to be a bureau for the city, marketing the city, and creating and upping its profile in order to have that profile once we got the go-ahead for the center," Evans explained. The hotel industry has watched the saga with added anticipation because of significant development of hotel infrastructure, much of which is riding on the projected numbers that a center - and other developments at regional airports and with upgrading roads - will bring. "There's a lot being developed on the basis that this other infrastructure is going to be put in place," Bourke said. "Otherwise we will have a situation where people in our business will find it very difficult."

Remaining Stumbling Blocks

Of course, the center is only one piece of the puzzle. Rustic beauty may be appealing on postcards, but the tens of thousands of predicted visitors would require upgraded roads and efficient air travel. Upgrading the country's infrastructure is unavoidable. Since the influx of tourists over the last few years, a push for a second terminal at Dublin Airport had grown in strength until the Irish government granted permission to build the longed-for second terminal. If the terminal is completed in 2009 as scheduled, the airport will be able to hold 32 million passengers per year. Talks of a third terminal are already in progress, with the possibility of that terminal being operational by 2014. Ninety-seven different airlines currently use Dublin Airport with more than 150 destinations being served. It is currently the fifth fastest-growing airport in Europe or the 19th busiest in the world in terms of international flights. Recent aviation agreements and route expansions "are all extremely positive developments which can only help Dublin to remain at the forefront of meetings planners' minds when considering suitable destinations for their events," Evans said.

Even with the center, of course, competition with other countries' venues will still be strong. But a least Ireland will be on a level playing ground.

"I don't think that a national center will mean that every piece of business goes here, because a conference center doesn't suit every client," Evans said. "On the flip side, we will be able to compete for business that we can't compete for now and raise our profile substantially."

Meanwhile, neighbors around Europe are proving just how well off the country might be with that raised profile. "It's not rocket science to see how well Edinburgh does or Birmingham does or London does," Bourke said. "It's a very clever thing to do."

The Convention Centre, Dublin: The Latest and Greatest

Ireland's Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism John O'Donoghue announced this past April that the contract for building The Convention Centre, Dublin, was awarded to Spencer Dock Convention Centre Dublin Ltd.

"The signing today of a contract between the Commissioners of Public Works and Spencer Dock Convention Centre Dublin Ltd represents a major milestone for Irish tourism," the minister said in a press release. "It delivers the last major commitment in respect of tourism under the Agreed Programme for Government and follows a most successful performance by Irish tourism in 2006." Under the public private partnership arrangement, Spencer Dock Convention Centre Dublin Ltd, is required to design, build, and finance the National Conference Centre and to operate and maintain it for a period of 25 years, after which the facility will revert to the State.

Work on the conference center, which will be located at Spencer Dock on the north side of the Liffey, will start immediately, as the project already has planning permission. The building has been designed by the Pritzker Prize-winner, Kevin Roche, the internationally renowned, Irish-born architect, who, after graduating from UCD School of Architecture in 1945, worked with the architect Michael Scott before moving to the United States.

The center will be capable of accommodating up to 2,000 delegates in plenary session. It will also have some 22 multi-purpose meeting rooms and approximately 4,500 square meters of flexible exhibition and banqueting space, along with associated press and delegate support facilities and general utility spaces. The building will accommodate conferences, exhibitions, and banqueting for up to 6,000 people.

"In other words," said the minister, "the centre will encompass the full range of facilities usually associated with state-of-the-art conference centres internationally." The Convention Centre, Dublin is expected to be operational in 2010.

A Shot in the Arm for Meetings

As work on Ireland's first national convention center gets under way, the country has taken an important step in boosting its chances for success. The recently enacted Finance Act 2007 provides that a business delegate attending a qualifying conference in Ireland is entitled to reclaim the VAT (Value-Added Taxes) paid in respect of accommodation costs incurred while attending that conference.

Jean Evans, CEO of Dublin Convention Bureau, commented, "This is a long-awaited and much lobbied for development for the meetings industry in Ireland which will undoubtedly enhance the attractiveness and competitiveness of Dublin and Ireland as an international meetings destination. Coinciding as it does with the official launch of the new Convention Centre, Dublin and major infrastructural developments at Dublin Airport and within the capital city itself, it all serves to strengthen Dublin's appeal to meetings organizers and delegates, enabling us to move towards achieving the ambitious tourism targets set by the Business Tourism Forum of 1 billion euros in revenue and 600,000 business visitors by 2013."

The Dublin Convention Bureau has an existing partnership with Tax Back International in order to assist organizations who don't have the expertise or resources themselves to maximize their VAT returns. For more information, visit www.irishrefunds.com/dcb.