Up to 60 Irish hotels ‘may go bust’ due to wedding cancellations
HOTELS in the south face a €200m (£182m) revenue hit between now and the end of September with the cancellation or postponement of thousands of weddings.
Up to 60 Irish hotels — employing up to 7,000 staff — rely on weddings for at least half their turnover and are now in grave danger of going out of business, according to Aiden Murphy, corporate recovery partner at Crowe Ireland.
The decision by the government to delay the easing of Covid restrictions until August 10 had doubled the likely revenue hit from cancelled wedding for some of the biggest and most high profile venues in the country he said.
The €200m hit would come on top of the estimated €60m (£55m) cost of weddings already lost by these key venues when the country was in full lockdown, he told the Sunday Independent.
During the three-month lockdown period weddings were down by over 4,000 compared to the same period last year. But 40% of the 20,000 weddings that take place in Ireland each year are traditionally held between July and September and the limitation of 50 attendees at social gatherings had already wiped out the wedding market for July before the government announced the delay, said Mr Murphy.
The future for many of these hotels now depends upon being able to trade at a profit next year, with many weddings deferred.
“The challenge for them now is whether they run out of cash and can they cover their costs between now and April or May 2021. That is nine months of no trading or very weak trading,” said Mr Murphy.