A week out from the June bank holiday weekend, two-night stays for couples in mid-range hotels and other accommodation types in Dublin, Cork and Galway were running at an average of €766.
The same figure for families of four, booking online, was working out at about €1,752.
With increasing focus on unavailable or expensive hotels and other accommodation, options appear severely curtailed for the bank holiday but online searches do turn up options across a range of prices.
Information on the three city breaks was gathered using Booking.com and Expedia at midday on Friday, exactly one week before the bank holiday and as the race picks up to secure short breaks across Ireland. Airbnb options were not included.
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While prices vary considerably per accommodation type (though most are hotels), and constantly change depending on availability, the average mid-range price for two nights over Saturday and Sunday, using both search sites, was €946 for two people in Dublin; €726 in Cork; and €628 in Galway.
The cheapest option was found to be a Connemara chalet 26km outside Galway city at €269. The most expensive was either an entire property - the five-bedroom Galway Manor Banba House at €3,458 – or a two-night break at Dublin’s exclusive Shelbourne Hotel for €2,900.
However, mid-range options ran from €594 to €999 as of about lunchtime on Friday.
“Dublin is now one of the highest cities in Europe in terms of hotel occupancy coming into the summer,” Fáilte Ireland chief executive Paul Kelly told RTÉ on Friday. “There is a lot of deferred business out there, business that had been deferred from 2020/2021 coming in this year... That is all putting pressure on the availability of hotel rooms.”
According to Booking.com searches, between 91 and 92 per cent of overall accommodation in each city was unavailable over the bank holiday, showing that while options existed, often at a price, demand remained high.
Availability for families of four, including two young children, were, as expected, considerably more limited, particularly when searching for one shared hotel room.
However, a glance at the three cities showed that a two-night bank-holiday break, factoring in some limited alternative accommodation types, averaged €1,752. Hayfield Manor in Cork cost the most at €2,304, while mid-range options in Dublin came in at about €1,880, and €1,138 in Cork.
Results and estimated costs can often be skewed, depending on the availability of multiple hotel rooms, or other alternative private options including houses and apartments.
While hotels have lost out on huge revenues throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Fáilte Ireland said most were acutely aware of their reputations when it came to the potential for so-called price gouging.
“Ireland is far and away one of the most expensive countries for insurance costs, [that is] a big factor of hotel costs,” Mr Kelly said. “Energy costs, food input costs, wage increases; they are all putting huge cost pressures into the system.”
