Is Belfast’s tourism future being built on solid ground — or seduced by shiny tech? In this reflective piece, I explore Augment the City, a bold new programme introducing AI and immersive storytelling to Belfast’s visitor offer. Drawing on personal experience in both digital and traditional arts, I welcome innovation but raise questions about its real-world impact, sector consultation and long-term strategy. Is this the start of something transformative — or just another bright, blinking distraction?
Introduction
On 5 July 2025, Belfast City Council announced that three companies have each received £100K to develop immersive tourism prototypes as part of Belfast’s Augment the City innovation programme [Reference 4, see notes at end]. Their concepts use AI and mixed reality to share authentic local stories and amplify underrepresented voices in the city’s cultural narrative. As a Green Badge tour guide working in Belfast, I naturally began to wonder how this might affect my industry, my colleagues and myself in the years ahead.
This is not a Luddite appeal to resist technology – far from it. I’m genuinely interested in the impact of digital tools and immersive experiences, particularly when they support inclusion and creativity. I worked at Wheelworks Arts for 18 months, which used digital and traditional arts to engage young people and their creativity engaging with augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR) and other non-digital art forms.
However, I do have concerns that the current focus feels a little too fixed on the bright, flashing fascinator of tech. It’s not always clear how these worries fit into a wider, coordinated strategy for sustainable tourism development in the city. Nor has there been much visible consultation with working tourism professionals like me, at least not that I’ve seen. That absence leaves questions about how well this innovation is grounded in the everyday realities of Belfast’s visitor economy.
Background
The Augment the City programme is an ambitious initiative led by Belfast City Council’s City Innovation Office and funded by the Belfast Region City Deal. With a total fund of £575,000, it empowers local SMEs to explore immersive technologies – including AR, VR and MR – to transform visitor experiences [1]. The programme is delivered through a three-phase competition model:
- Phase 1 saw ten companies receive up to £10,000 each to explore immersive tourism concepts and present them in a competitive pitch session in Belfast [1].
- Phase 2 involved six companies awarded up to £35,000 to develop their ideas further into working proposals [2].
- Phase 3 culminated in three finalists receiving £100,000 each to create fully functional prototypes to be trialled in real-world tourism settings [4].
The three finalists announced as part of Phase 3 on 5 July were:
- Hamilton Robson, working with 1Up Studios and the Nerve Centre, is building the Belfast Stories Generator – an AI interviewer and holographic interface that will form a searchable digital archive of local stories.
- Liquid City’s Amergin aims to create a mobile storytelling tool powered by AI, allowing anyone to capture and share stories on the go.
- Ekaterina Solomatina’s Memory Fractal Belfast will use mixed reality to inspire and share personal and cultural memories, especially from underrepresented communities [4][5].
These projects are being developed with an eye toward Belfast Stories, a major new tourism attraction due to open in 2029 [3]. The hope is to create emotionally resonant, immersive visitor journeys that highlight the depth and diversity of life in the city.
The Augment the City programme is part of the XR Belfast initiative, which offers skills development, creative mentorship and access to state-of-the-art connectivity for SMEs in the region. XR Belfast is helping local creatives integrate emerging technologies into their workflows, thereby building long-term capacity and competitiveness [5].
Belfast’s City Innovation Office, with partners such as Digital Catapult NI, is also delivering Creative Capacity Sessions and a Creative Mentorship Programme to support those in sectors such as design, animation and advertising to transition into immersive production [5].
The programme has drawn support from across government, with officials praising its role in stimulating R&D investment, promoting collaborative innovation, and showcasing Northern Ireland’s global potential in digital tourism [1][4].
A Bold New Future? Immersive Tech and the Tourism Tightrope
The Augment the City initiative represents an exciting step towards digitally enabled tourism in Belfast. By investing in storytelling technologies and cultural engagement tools, it brings the city in line with international trends that prize personalisation, interactivity and emotional resonance. Projects such as SIGN, which creates accessible tours for the deaf and hearing-impaired using AR and haptic feedback, show real potential for inclusive innovation [5]. Others, like Yarns, Craic, and Danders, offer an imaginative blend of humour, narrative and walking tours through game engine tech – something I find genuinely intriguing.
Immersive technology also brings potential wider economic benefits. It supports local creative industries, encourages digital skills development and promotes Belfast as a forward-thinking destination. Tools like Amergin and Belfast Stories Generator can enable self-guided, flexible exploration of the city – reducing pressure on infrastructure and supporting longer, higher-value visits, particularly from international audiences.
But for all the potential, the limitations are equally worth noting. Immersive tech – while attention-grabbing – doesn’t solve Belfast’s deeper tourism challenges: labour shortages, high operating costs, limited accommodation and poor international connectivity (see my article here). As I wrote in this previous post, these issues remain critical bottlenecks to real growth. Meanwhile, immersive tourism experiences, by their nature, risk being short-lived – today’s innovation could be tomorrow’s outdated platform. Sustaining and updating this tech will require consistent funding and digital capacity, which not all operators may be able to access.
Another concern is the limited visibility of sector consultation. As someone actively working in the field, I’ve seen little engagement with tour guides or hospitality professionals during the programme’s rollout. This raises questions about whether the innovations are being developed with – or simply for – the tourism workforce. Many of us have decades of experience interpreting Belfast’s stories, and while I’m open to hybrid formats, digital curation is a major leap that will require both time and training.
There’s also the matter of accessibility. Not all tourists are comfortable navigating AR apps or using mobile devices during their visit. For older visitors or those with limited digital literacy, a tech-first approach could feel alienating rather than inclusive. Add to that the growing ethical concerns around AI, data capture and story ownership, and it’s clear that the city will need to tread carefully.
Final Thoughts
I’m optimistic about the promise of immersive tech and excited by the creativity behind some of these projects. Done well, they could add depth, nuance and playfulness to Belfast’s visitor experience. But tech should complement, not replace, what’s already working. Our city’s strength lies in its people, stories and lived experiences – the kind you can’t always replicate through a screen.
Augment the City could be a strong foundation for Belfast’s tourism future, but only if it’s built alongside a clear, inclusive and long-term strategy that supports the whole sector – not just its most digital corners.
References
[1] Augment the City – £575,000 fund for innovation in immersive tech (accessed on 10 July 2025)
[2] XRBelfast – Augment the City Challenge Fund (accessed on 10 July 2025)
[3] Tourism NI – Augment The City Challenge Competition (accessed on 10 July 2025)
[4] Belfast City Council – Revolutionising the local tourism experience with immersive tech (accessed on 10 July 2025)
[5] XRBelfast – Full list of funded projects and innovation ecosystem details (accessed on 10 July 2025)