Dear old Dublin? Capital fares well in survey of city prices
IN the race to attract post-Brexit workers and business, Dublin doesn’t fare too badly in the latest survey of the world’s most expensive cities.
Carried out by ground transportation provider hoppa, the survey ranks Dublin in 30th place — well below Brexit jobs rivals Amsterdam (third overall) or Copenhagen (8th). The research looks at a variety of categories, including the price of a restaurant meal for two, taxi fare for a 5km trip, hotel costs and drinks prices.
Dublin cost an average of £192.97 a day, much lower than the likes of smaller, and less important, Edinburgh (£232.82). Surprisingly, Dublin is only slightly dearer than 38th-placed Belfast, where the average daily cost was £182.18.
Despite the major hotel openings in Belfast last year, its overnight hotel charge averaged at £122.50 — higher than Dublin at £112.
However, the capital ranked higher than its northern counterpart in dining out, drinks prices for wine, beer and coffee and the price of a taxi trip. But it’ll be worth noting what effect the Vat rise this month will have on future figures.
Overall, the survey reflected other recent surveys which showed that New York is the toughest place on the pocket for doing business. It cost an average of £375.38 a night, followed by tech centre San Francisco (£305.56), Amsterdam (£302.31), and Zurich (£297.21). At the lowest end of the scale, Manila was around a fifth of the New York cost at £74.53, followed by the cities of Sofia, Bulgaria, Antalaya in Turkey, Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur and Vietnam’s growing Ho Chi Minh City. Closer to home, London ranked as the 13th most expensive city in the world, costing travellers £250.92 — down from 9th place in 2018 — but with hotels costing on average £169.00 a night.
One hundred cities around the world were included in the research, with four of the most expensive cities in the US and three, surprisingly, in Spain, while Asia, despite its business muscle, still home to the majority of the cheapest cities.
Emirates is still looking to expand at Dublin Airport — albeit in the medium term, following latest results that showed it carried 442,000 passengers — up 2pc — on the Dublin-Dubai route. The airline is still examining increasing its capacity out of Dublin, with an increase in aircraft from the current Boeing 777s to super jumbo Airbus A380s. Given that the double-decker planes require special split-level boarding tunnels, it’s not an option at present. “We’d like to increase, and we’re in close conversation with the DAA about how we might be able to make that happen,” said Emirates country manager Enda Corneille.
“The obvious one is to up-gauge the aircraft to an A380, but realistically, we’re a couple of years away from that. The new runway and all the infrastructure around that is the priority for the DAA.”
Inbound business and leisure from the UAE has risen this year, based on easier access to Ireland. “One thing that we have seen this year is a lot more direct business from Dubai into Ireland, because since last February the regulations around UAE nationals requiring a visa have been relaxed,” said Corneille. “That’s resulted in massive increases.”
It’s a “richer yield” for the airline, with the UAE market tending to opt for business class, and Corneille believes that the market will grow. “The IDA now have a team on the ground in the UAE to begin driving business between the two countries. That’s going to contribute a lot more to pure business travel between the two.”
On outbound, he added: “Australia always looms large and Bangkok is very big for us, Sydney Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane — plus we’ve had big traffic increases into Kuala Lumpur and Manila. The biggest increase is Vietnam, and there’s good business into the likes of South Africa.”
While much of the focus of Irish air routes is on North America, there’s been growth in access to the east out of Ireland, with the arrival of direct flights to Beijing (Hainan Airlines) and Hong Kong (Cathay Pacific) last year, plus Turkish Airlines’ ongoing switch to a megahub in Istanbul, and regional rivals to Emirates in the shape of Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways.
“When you look at the year, and the competition we faced like never before, to be able to report an increase at all is tremendous,” said Corneille, adding: “Had you offered me 2pc [passenger rise] in January, I would have bitten your hand off.”
Hence the ongoing focus on whether there’s extra value to be had in increasing capacity.
“This year we have a seat factor of around 80pc, so you might say there’s 20pc headroom.
“Still, we think we can grow the business with the current capacity but certainly we do want to increase.”