People hoping to secure last-minute hotel rooms in Dublin city centre in advance of major rugby and boxing events this weekend will be expected to pay about €400 for a night’s stay.
Leinster take on La Rochelle in the Heineken Champions Cup Final at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday afternoon before Katie Taylor’s fight with Chantelle Cameron in the 3Arena that night.
There were limited options in terms of rooms available in Dublin city centre for Saturday at the time of writing. A double room at the Trinity City Hotel cost €389, according to Booking.com, with a similar room at the Gibson Hotel costing €399.
The price of a classic queen room at the Spencer Hotel stood at €409, according to the same website, while the Fitzwilliam Hotel was charging €559 for a double room.
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A double room in the Grafton Hotel was €599 for the night, with a deluxe king room in the Conrad priced at €743. A standard queen room in Arthaus Hotel was €389 and a double room in the Academy Plaza Hotel was €429.
‘Very high level of demand’
The Irish Hotel Federation (IHF) said Dublin city was experiencing a “very high level of demand” due to the sporting events this weekend. It said the 23,000 hotel and guest house rooms across the city had “essentially been sold out in advance”.
“We estimate that there may be less than 2 per cent of rooms still available which are now most likely only available by booking directly with hotels,” the IHF said in a statement.
“Visitors staying in hotels on these dates will have booked their accommodation weeks if not months in advance, and these rooms would have been sold at much lower rates than any last-availability rates.
“The last-availability rates represent a tiny fraction of all rooms in Dublin and are in no way reflective of the value that has been available to Irish consumers and overseas visitors.”
Michael Kilcoyne, chairman of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland, accused hotels of “using the opportunity to rob the hard-pressed consumer”.
“There is very little competition now in the hotel industry with nearly a third of hotels being used by the Government for refugees,” he said. “That means there is less competition and really, they [hotels] are ripping us off when they get the chance. Hotels will say ‘that’s the market economy, that’s what we do’, but it’s unfair and it’s unethical.
“There is no justification for it. Everyone is entitled to make a reasonable profit, but they’re not entitled to rip people off.”
Damaging industry reputation
Fáilte Ireland said it has no role in the setting of accommodation prices but that the increased frequency and scale of price spikes in the sector was damaging the industry’s reputation “both nationally and internationally”.
The organisation said its chief executive Paul Kelly wrote to all registered accommodation providers last December asking them to consider the State’s “long-term value for money reputation when setting prices”.
“This message has since been repeated at various Fáilte Ireland industry events and again at the Irish Hotels Federation recent annual conference,” a spokeswoman for the agency said. “Hotel occupancy in Dublin is one of the highest in Europe and it’s clear that we still require more hotel rooms to meet the city’s diverse needs for tourist accommodation.
“This excess of demand over supply combined with rapidly rising input costs creates significant upward pressure on market pricing.”
