No flood of visitors in sight as season getsalatestart

THE summer tourist season in West Kerry will get off to a very late start when hotels, guesthouses, B&Bs, restaurants and bars serving food are allowed reopen for business next Monday but this won’t result in a flood of visitors to the area, according to Dingle Peninsula Alliance Chairman Gary Curran.

To meet social distancing requirements, most accommodation providers will only be able to operate at a little over a third of their full capacity and, even at that, many still have vacancies. According to Gary it is a pattern that will define the remainder of what is likely to be a very short tourist season as foreign visitors stay away and resort towns around the country compete to attract the limited number of Irish holidaymakers.

“I hear people saying it’s going to be packed [in Dingle]. They should have a look at my order book... “Bookings [for accommodation] are there and they are OK, but by comparison with a normal July it will be a write-off,” he said. “For this year you’d be happy just to have the door open again, but staff numbers will be well down… An awful lot of people who would normally have summer season jobs in Dingle will have no work this year.”

He added that restaurants, which “run on very tight margins’, face an enormous challenge to operate profitably under social distancing restrictions because they will have far fewer customers but will still carry high running costs.

Gary expects to see a pick-up in the season after pubs – which are a key attraction in Dingle are allowed reopen on July 20. However, he fears the gain will be short-lived. “You’d be positive of hitting 50 per cent or higher occupancy by mid August, but then there will be a fall-off when the schools reopen. Normally European tourists fill the numbers in late August and early September but we won’t have that market this year and the older American tourists who come in September won’t be coming either. The bookings aren’t there and they won’t be there,” he said.

Gary predicted the tourist season will come to an early end in the autumn because business owners who struggle through the summer in the hope of building up some cash reserves for winter will have no appetite for risking potential losses by staying open in a depleted market.

However, he said an extension of the wage subsidy for tourism industry workers could help extend the season. “The subsidy takes huge pressure off employers and could keep afloat businesses that might otherwise be forced to close... It’s a safety net that allows you take a risk.”