International Hospitality and Tourism Student Journal 7 (1) 2015 60-74 To investigate the socio-cultural impacts of The Gathering in County Clare, Ireland. Emma Nash and Dr. Noelle O’Connor HTMi, Hotel & Tourism Management Institute, Sörenberg, 6174 Luzern, Switzerland _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract Tourism is one of the largest contributors to Ireland’s GDP. The Gathering Ireland was devised both as a tourism initiative and as a way to bring the Irish Diaspora home. It was a year-long cultural event that sought to highlight the Irish culture and it was achieved by putting the power in the hands of the people. By giving people ownership over their own events it was felt that the events were a more accurate portrayal of the area and were more enjoyable as a result. The researcher chose County Clare (Ireland) as the case study as that is the researcher’s home county and it was felt that this provided an advantage in studying the socio-cultural effects as there was already first-hand knowledge of both before, during and after. The four areas chosen were; Ballyvaghan, Bodyke, Ennis, and Lahinch. It was judged that The Gathering was a success with minimal socio-cultural impacts. By giving people input into the events rather than the festival seeming like something that was done to them The Gathering was enjoyable for everyone involved. This is backed by tourism industry professionals who were very positive about the year and would recommend that the plans for a second Gathering go ahead for 2018. If The Gathering 2018 is to ameliorate on the results of 2013 several key areas need to be looked at; longer lead in time, funding available earlier, promotional material, and specific Mentoring Keywords: Cultural event; Locals; Socio-cultural impacts; Festivals; The Gathering; Ireland © 2014 International Hospitality Research Centre. All rights reserved. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to investigate the socio-cultural impacts of The Gathering events on the host communities that have been selected as case studies for this paper in County Clare. The communities chosen are as follows; Ballyvaghan, Bodyke, Ennis, and Lahinch. Each community was picked in respect to their particular location around County Clare. The four communities encompass North (Ballyvaghan), East (Bodyke), South (Ennis), and West (Lahinch). They were also chosen to help in exploring if location has had anything to do with the more successful Gathering events with Ennis representing the urban town, Lahinch, the well-known tourist destination, Bodyke as a rural area and Ballyvaghan as a less well known tourist destination. The Gathering Ireland 2013 has described the festival as “a year-long celebration of Ireland and all things Irish” with the aim to raise visitor numbers to the country by an additional three hundred thousand (Miley, 2013). The Gathering Ireland has released a statement that it is estimated that between 250,000 and 275,000 international visitors came to Ireland due to The Gathering (The Gathering Ireland, 2013). Although The Gathering is not an original thought with events like Scotland's “Year of Homecoming” in 2009 and a second Homecoming planned for 2014 (Irish Times, 2013) celebrating the Scottish culture, “The Pingxi Lantern Festival” in Taiwan which is an event that has been taking place for over two thousand years which celebrates the Chinese culture (Kelly and Brown, 2011) and many others paving the way for the celebration of Irish culture and heritage. Figure 1: Map of County Clare (Watschong, 2014). The goals of this project are: to explore the impacts (both positive and negative) The Gathering events may have had on host communities; to investigate the difference in impacts between urban and rural communities; to gauge public \ 60 60