About the Hosts

Routes Europe 2017 will be hosted by Team Northern Ireland. 

Team Northern Ireland is the Department for the Economy and its agencies – Invest NI and Tourism NI – as well as Belfast City Council, Visit Belfast, Tourism Ireland, George Best Belfast City Airport, Belfast International Airport, City of Derry Airport and Belfast Waterfront.

As partners working together to make Northern Ireland a great place to work, live, visit and do business, they are eager to showcase the best of this dynamic and forward-looking region they call home.

Belfast is steeped in history, visitors will be able to experience the many attractions and unique hospitality that the city has to offer.

One of the most popular weekend destinations in Europe, visited by eight million tourists every year, Northern Ireland’s top attractions include: Titanic Belfast, the Ulster Museum and Derry/Londonderry’s city walls. The HBO TV series Game of Thrones has helped to boost tourism to the city by bringing some of the country’s most stunning locations to the attention of a world-wide audience of millions.

The city is located only an hour away from some of Europe’s most unspoilt scenery including Giants Causeway (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the scenic Fermanagh Lakelands and the Mountains of Mourne.

The Northern Ireland Executive has targeted tourism as a growth industry that will deliver £1 billion a year to the economy by 2020, and it is with this backdrop that an air route development fund was announced to support new services.