Cost of Dublin hotel room during busy sporting weekend reaches €400 – The Irish Times
Those wanting to secure a last-minute hotel room in Dublin city center ahead of the big rugby and boxing events this weekend will have to pay around €400 for a night’s accommodation.
Leinster meets La Rochelle in the Heineken Champions Cup final at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday afternoon before a clash between Katie Taylor and Chantelle Cameron at the 3Arena this evening.
At the time of writing, available rooms in Dublin city center were limited for Saturday. According to Booking.com, a double room in the Trinity City Hotel cost 389 euros, a similar room in the Gibson Hotel 399 euros.
According to the same website, the Spencer Hotel was priced at €409 for a classic queen room, while the Fitzwilliam Hotel was charging €559 for a double.
A double room at the Grafton Hotel was €599 per night, a deluxe king room at the Conrad was €743. A standard queen room at the Arthaus Hotel was €389 and a double room at the Academy Plaza Hotel was €429.
“Very high demand”
The Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) said the city of Dublin was experiencing “very high demand” due to this weekend’s sporting events. It said the 23,000 hotel and guest house rooms across the city had “substantially sold out in advance”.
“We estimate that there may be less than 2 percent of rooms still available, which are now most likely only available through direct bookings with hotels,” the IHF said in a statement.
“Visitors staying in hotels on these dates booked their accommodation weeks, if not months, in advance and these rooms would have sold at much lower prices than any last availability rates.”
“Last availability rates represent a tiny fraction of all rooms in Dublin and in no way reflect the value offered to Irish consumers and overseas visitors.”
Michael Kilcoyne, chairman of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland, accused the hotels of “seizing the opportunity to rob the harried consumer”.
“There is very little competition in the hotel industry right now, with almost a third of hotels used by the government for refugees,” he said. “It means there’s less competition, really [hotels] cheat us if they get the chance. Hotels will say ‘this is market economy, this is what we do’ but that is unfair and unethical.
“There is no justification for that. Everyone has the right to make a reasonable profit, but they have no right to rip off others.”
damage to the reputation of the industry
Fáilte Ireland said it played no role in setting accommodation prices but the increasing frequency and scale of price spikes in the sector were damaging the industry’s reputation “both nationally and internationally”.
The organization said its chief executive, Paul Kelly, wrote to all registered accommodation providers last December, asking them to consider the state’s “long-term reputation for value for money” when setting prices.
“This message has since been reiterated at various Fáilte Ireland industry events and again at the Irish Hotels Federation’s recent annual conference,” said a spokeswoman for the agency. “Dublin’s hotel occupancy rate is one of the highest in Europe and it’s clear we still need more hotel rooms to meet the city’s diverse tourist accommodation needs.
“This excess of demand over supply combined with rapidly increasing input costs is creating significant upward pressure on market prices.”