Irish guests ease pain for luxury hotel sector
Domestic visitors cannot replace overseas tourists in the long term, writes Fearghal O’Connor
IRELAND’S most luxurious hotels and country houses are benefiting from the domestic tourism boom but a lack of overseas tourists is not sustainable in the long term, according to the CEO of Ireland’s Blue Book.
Michelle Maguire told the Sunday Independent that the Blue Book’s collection of 56 country house hotels, historic houses, castles and restaurants around the island of Ireland were lucky to have been able to open since June, unlike others in the sector.
Properties such as Ballymaloe House and Hayfield Manor, both in Cork, Castle Leslie in Monaghan and Ballyfin Demesne in Laois, have seen strong business from Irish families since reopening but a return of overseas trade will be crucial for a luxury tourism market that had grown strongly before the pandemic.
“In normal times a lot of our business is from overseas. If you go west of the Shannon, for example some of the houses in Clare in the summer, it would be about 70pc American business normally. On the east coast it would be about domestic or British customers.”
There is a lot of competition now for domestic business, she said.
“We are a small country. It’s very hard to sustain our tourism industry just on our domestic market. The numbers just wouldn’t be there in the long term. So we’ll get through this summer because obviously people are not going overseas at the moment, they are
taking their holiday at home. But that’s an anomaly that I imagine won’t continue.”
Nevertheless, she said, the tourism sector had always been prone to shocks and it was important to remain optimistic.
“We’ve had September 11, a volcano going off in Iceland, you know. But this is huge. Unlike other times where you might have one market impacted, like with Brexit our British market is affected, this is obviously the entire market. However, we have colleagues who are in other countries where there is no domestic tourism so we’re very lucky to have it.”
The health situation meant it would be
a very slow return for the overseas market, she said.
“However, I’m on webinars every night with the US talking about 2021 and 2022. I’ll be on a webinar in the morning with Australian travel agents. We must remember the lead time and a lot of those trips would be nearly two years,” she said.
There had been “disappointment in our sector” that the government had not given a special cut to the VAT rate on tourism and hospitality as had previously been the case.
“If you look at our colleagues in GB, they had a drop in their VAT rate. We’re on the one island so that was disappointing,” she said.
A major overseas marketing campaign would be required to attract tourists back to Ireland once it is safe to do so, said Maguire.
“It will require a lot of funds to promote Ireland overseas when the time is right. We’re competing against a lot of countries around the world so we’ve got to be out there fighting.”
It’s hard to sustain our business on just the domestic market