It Offers Iconic Tourism Experiences Focused on Sustainable, Environmentally Friendly, Slow Adventure, Health-Focused, and Wellbeing.
Slow Adventure is all about creating inspiring connections with the outdoors, giving you a chance to explore and engage with Leitrim’s wild, open, and naturally beautiful places.
Working in partnership with tourism providers, Leitrim Slow Adventure has put together a wide range of slow adventure experiences that invite visitors to experience nature, its seasons, its weather, and its variations – at a slower, immersive pace.
Visitors can enjoy one, two, or three-day experiences. Stay in nature, enjoy bushcraft and foraging, paddle or canoe on the water, or cycle or walk by the water.
Leitrim Slow Adventure SMEs Collectively Develop Regional Packages
Slow Adventure, County Leitrim Ireland, was set up by a group of rural tourism SMEs who invite their target markets to immerse themselves in stunning peaceful Leitrim. The visitor experience is about reflection, reconnection, learning something new, enjoying spellbinding storytelling, and indulging in its food, culture, and heritage via guided tours through the landscapes and rivers.
Packages Configuration
| Structure | 1 Region (County Leitrim), Multiple Packages, Multiple Partnering SME’s Working as a Regional Wellbeing Network
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| Geographical Coverage | County of Leitrim, Ireland (Regional Approach). |
| Wellbeing Experiences Main Motivation | Dining Experience, walks, cycling, a Canadian canoe tour, alternative accommodation, SUP, sailing, organic garden center, spa retreat, surfing, and canoeing. |
| Secondary Motivation | Accommodation: small, authentic, self-catering to hosted, all-inclusive. |
| Added Value Packages | Accommodation, lunches, meals, guides fees, transport, and admission fees. Each Package has a different Add Value.
Some offer cheaper prices for staying midweek. |
| Packages | Self-Built – visitor chooses experience(s) then accommodation or chooses Day Trip and can add accommodation as an option
All-Inclusive – packages already built around themes (accommodation, meals, experiences included) A mixture of 2 nights, mid-week, day trips only
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| Price Point | Is a budget, all-inclusive, day trip and adds accommodation suitable to visitors at different price points |
| Available | All year-round |
Slow adventure is all about creating inspiring connections with the outdoors.
A chance to explore and engage with wild, open, and natural places. To Journey through breath-taking landscapes at a slower immersive pace. Creating memories through meaningful experiences as you invest time in a place, in its traditions and community. Surrendering to the natural forces of the environment as you reflect, reconnect, and become closer to nature.
Approach
Step 1 Visitors Choose their Wellbeing Slow Adventure
Slow Adventure Leitrim brings together wellbeing accommodation and experience providers who enjoy sharing their sense of place with visitors by sharing traditional skills, local knowledge, storytelling, and spending time together in nature. Visitors can pick from one of the predesigned 10 unique packages or pick their own or choose and build their flexible package. For the self-build option, there are 10 different unique wellbeing options available. Overnight packages are available as well as unique 1-day adventures. Rest assured, each of the businesses and providers are hand-picked for their quality, attention-to-detail, and environmentally friendly credentials.
- Edergole Kitchen (vegan and vegetarian dining experience)
- Landscape Walks
- Leitrim Cycling
- Teapot Lane (alternative accommodation)
- Way to Go Adventures (canoeing, SUP, and cycling)
- Leitrim Surf
- Organic Garden Centre
- Ard Nahoo Spa Retreat
- Lough Allen Adventure
- Adventure Gently (Canadian Canoe trip)
Step 1 Then they Choose their Accommodation There are 5 accommodation providers each offer more than just a comfortable night’s sleep. They also each offer their own unique well-being experience.
- Ard Nahoo Eco-Cabins
- River Cottage
- Old Rectory
- Tawnylust Lodge
- Ardvarney Country Lodge
Promotional Approach Each package has a video showing what is included and a video of the destination covered, package description, what is included in the price, what guests need to bring and CTA (Call to Action Buttons) Book Now, Contact Us, Accommodation
Or visitors pick a pre-designed package.
Example of a Package ‘Relaxed Slow Adventure’
Midweek 2 nights’ accommodation in one of Ard Nahoo’s award-winning eco-cabins with a continental breakfast of locally produced organic food. Dinner is provided on both nights by Edergole Kitchen.
Day one: Arrive at Ard Nahoo’s eco-cabins. Experience Uisce hour and complete relaxation in tranquil surroundings. Dinner will be provided by Edergole Kitchen that night.
Day two: Breakfast will be self-prepared with the locally produced organic food from your welcome basket. Guided walks with a local historian who will take you through some local sites and the Ard Nahoo story. Graham from Adventure Gently will guide you along the River Bonet by canoe. Dinner is provided that night at the Edergole Kitchen Supper Club.
Day three: Continental breakfast prepared from your welcome basket. Take some time out for yoga which will be conducted by a top-class yoga teacher – suitable for all fitness levels.
Prices from €323 (Subject to availability, terms, and conditions apply)
Ard Nahoo price includes: Midweek 2 nights’ accommodation with breakfast (continental), Uisce Hour, Guided Walk, Canoe trip, Lunch, Yoga Session, Slow Food dinner on both nights
Extras: Drinks – guests to bring their own
Guests to bring: Loose clothing, Walking shoes, Rainwear
Grassroots Like Slow Adventure Leitrim Puts Health at the Heart of Tourism Development
Grassroots resources is driven by putting health at the heart of tourism business development for youth.
In recognition of the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Grassroots Project wants to assist in providing the resources and roadmap for better health and well-being tourism in small countries. This is in line with the WHO seventh high-level meeting of the small countries in 2021, which aims to place health and well-being high on the key political agendas of small countries; advocate the needs of small countries at the regional and international levels; promote investment for health and well-being, leaving no one behind; build a solutions platform for better population health and resilient health systems; and measure progress (1).
Grassroots recognizes healthy and sustainable tourism as an area in which cooperation should be further intensified, especially through young people. Its key messages are to assist future and existing young entrepreneurs in Europe in how to bring the importance of health to the forefront of their tourism businesses. How without sustainability and health at the heart of tourism development like Slow Adventure Leitrim, that tourism itself becomes unsustainable.
Grassroots aims to equip people to rebuild tourism more resilient than ever, be even better than business as usual, and in a more sustainable, and inclusive. Inherent to its adaptation is the idea that the cooperation between the health and tourism sectors could be strengthened to incorporate young entrepreneurs. They are after all the future of our tourism industry.
Throughout the development of Grassroots we want to make sure recipients understand the complexities of tourism and eco-health.
The interconnection between health and tourism is multifaceted. This encompasses direct and indirect health impacts, the tourism workforce and businesses, safety and security related to travel, water and sanitation, food, and hygienic conditions, and socioeconomic and environmental aspects important for health and well-being in host communities (19). Multiple health benefits and impacts are linked to different tourism types and forms, travel modes, individual characteristics of travelers, traveler behavior, the tourism workforce, host-community characteristics, the quality of the health system, public health, and existing safety, security and hygiene measures (Fig. 3, Box 1).
