Laois Is on the EU's Shortlist for a Major Smart Tourism Award — Here's Why It Deserves to Win

The Shortlist

Laois has been shortlisted for the European Commission's 2026 European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism Award, a competitive EU recognition programme that selects destinations across Europe demonstrating innovation in sustainable and digital tourism development. The shortlisting places Laois alongside European cities and regions that have implemented measurable, replicable approaches to making their tourism offering more sustainable, more digitally accessible and more responsive to visitor needs without compromising the environmental and cultural assets that make a place worth visiting in the first place.

For a midlands county without a coastline, without major urban infrastructure, and historically absent from the front pages of Ireland's tourism conversation, making the shortlist for a competitive European award in smart tourism is a genuinely significant achievement, and one that deserves more attention than it has received in the Irish media.

What Smart Tourism Actually Means

The European Commission's Smart Tourism Awards, which have been running since 2019, assess destinations across four dimensions: sustainability, accessibility, digitisation and cultural heritage and creativity. The "Green Pioneer" category, in which Laois has been shortlisted, is specifically focused on environmental sustainability and responsible tourism development — how destinations are managing visitor impact, reducing carbon footprint, protecting biodiversity, and integrating environmental considerations into the visitor experience itself rather than treating sustainability as a marketing add-on.

Destinations on the shortlist are expected to demonstrate initiatives that are not just aspirational but implemented: digital wayfinding systems that reduce car dependency, waste reduction programmes at major visitor sites, energy efficiency measures at accommodation and attractions, and visitor management strategies that protect sensitive ecological areas from over-tourism. The award is competitive at European level, which means Laois is being assessed against urban destinations in France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany that have substantially larger tourism budgets and more developed visitor infrastructure.

Why Laois Is Competing at This Level

Laois's tourism proposition is built around a combination of heritage, landscape and community that has been developed deliberately and consistently over the past decade. The county's anchor visitor attraction, the Rock of Dunamase — a dramatic limestone outcrop carrying the ruins of a castle with origins in the 12th century, overlooking the Midlands plain — is one of the most photogenic heritage sites in the inland counties and has been progressively improved in terms of visitor access and interpretation. Portlaoise, the county town, has undergone significant investment in public realm and cultural infrastructure, including Dunamaise Arts Centre, which has established a national reputation for both programme quality and community engagement.

The county has also positioned itself within the broader Ireland's Ancient East brand, building a connected heritage itinerary that includes Abbeyleix, one of Ireland's most intact planned estate towns and itself a designated heritage town, alongside monastic sites, canal walks on the Grand Canal, and the Slieve Bloom Mountains, which offer walking and cycling on one of the Midlands' most distinctive upland landscapes. The Slieve Blooms, straddling the Laois-Offaly border, are the lowest mountain range in Ireland but among the most accessible for walking, with the Slieve Bloom Way long-distance trail and a network of shorter loop walks connecting to local communities and accommodation providers.

The smart and digital tourism dimension, the specific focus of the European award category, reflects investment by Laois County Council and the Local Enterprise Office in digital trail mapping, QR-coded interpretation at heritage sites, and integration with Fáilte Ireland's digital platforms that makes Laois destinations findable and bookable through national and international travel planning channels. The county has also been active in the National Trails Office's walking trail improvement programme, with investment in surfaces, waymarking and safety improvements on key routes making the walking product more consistent and more suitable for international visitors accustomed to higher trail infrastructure standards.

The Midlands Tourism Case: More Than One County

Laois's shortlisting is also part of a broader story about the Midlands' emergence as a legitimate tourism destination rather than a transit zone between Dublin and the west. The EU's Just Transition funding, which has been flowing into Midlands counties including Laois, Offaly, Roscommon, Tipperary and Westmeath to support economic diversification away from peat-based industries, has included significant investment in tourism and outdoor recreation infrastructure. Fáilte Ireland's Regenerative Tourism and Placemaking Scheme has approved over €27 million across 22 Midlands projects, including the Bord na Móna walking and cycling trails development covering nearly 79km of new routes on former industrial peatland.

The cumulative effect of that investment, combined with county-level tourism strategy by councils including Laois, is a Midlands tourism product that has improved substantially in quality, range and accessibility over the past five years. International visitors, increasingly guided by curated digital itineraries rather than traditional guidebooks, are discovering the region in growing numbers — a trend reinforced by Tourism Ireland's Ireland Unrushed campaign, which has been specifically designed to direct visitors toward exactly the kind of slower-paced, nature-connected, off-the-beaten-track experience that the Midlands is positioned to offer.

The Bottom Line

Laois on the EU Smart Tourism shortlist is not a surprise to anyone who has been watching what the county and its council have been doing in heritage interpretation, digital trail infrastructure and sustainable visitor management over the past decade. It is a recognition that thoughtful, consistent, sustainability-led tourism development at county level can compete at European level — and that Ireland's midlands counties, long overlooked in the national tourism conversation, have been building something genuinely worth recognising.