Nicole Glennon: How tourism hopes to put the year of Covid-19 behind it  

In 2020, tourism in Ireland has had to weather repeated lockdowns, the cancellation of flights and the disappearance of the high-spending tourists from the US                

Blarney Castle: Tourism has had to weather repeated lockdowns, the cancellation of flights and the disappearance of the high-spending tourists from the US.

In 2019, the Irish tourism industry was worth €9.3bn to the economy and employed 265,000 people. 

That was when more than 10m tourists visited the island and spent close to €5.2bn, bringing prosperity to all four corners of the country and helping small rural communities make a living.     

“Tourism was at a record high,” said Eoghan O’Mara Walsh, chief executive of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC), which brings together the tourism businesses and Government agencies under the same umbrella.  

“We never had as many people spending as much money,” he said. 

But the cancellation of the St Patrick's Day Parade this year early on in the Covid-19 health crisis was a harbinger of things to come for everyone making a living from Ireland’s tourism and hospitality industry.

Tourism has had to weather repeated lockdowns, the cancellation of flights and the disappearance of the high-spending tourists from the US.                    

An industry that was the first to be hit by the Covid-19 economic crisis and the hardest hit, will likely to be the last to recover.

Many businesses in tourism and hospitality were allowed to reopen their doors at the end of June.

International arrivals down 92% in Nov according to @CSOIreland. Dec will be the same. When will we see an upturn? Only with pre-travel testing and urgent rollout of vaccine. pic.twitter.com/4CGFtTzEls

— Eoghan O'Mara Walsh (@EoghanOMW) December 22, 2020

However, Mr O’Mara Walsh said the domestic market was never going to be strong enough to sustain the industry because three-quarters of visitors who spend money across the island come from overseas.

Visitor numbers "obviously dried up to virtually nothing, and have stayed at virtually nothing”, Mr O'Mara Walsh said.  

Ahead of October's budget, ITIC had warned that the loss of international tourists had cost the industry €27m per day.

The industry group had also warned that 300,000 jobs were at risk, in the absence of Government measures to support tourism and hospitality. 

The Burren Limestone, Clare. File picture.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohue appeared to take much of this warning on board.

He agreed with long-standing industry demands and sanctioned a reduction in the Vat hospitality rate, back down from 13.5% to 9%. 

A new €55m business continuity support for tourism businesses that were said to be “key to the recovery of tourism” was also established.

The extension of the tax warehousing scheme and the Government’s Covid-19 Restriction Support Scheme (CRSS) were also hailed as key measures for the industry.

Mr O’Mara Walsh welcomed the budget measures as an important “first step” in ensuring the survival of tourism businesses.

But what about the many jobs that have been lost?

“I think it saved a good portion of the businesses, but there was an awful lot of job losses,” he said, noting there are probably about 150,000 fewer people working in tourism and hospitality than a year ago.  

“A number of the businesses survived because of the employment wage subsidy scheme and the CRSS scheme but subsidies can never replace lost business,” Mr O’Mara Walsh said.

Aaron Mansworth, general manager of the Trigon group of hotels, which includes the Metropole, Cork International, and the Cork Airport Hotel, said he believed the budget did its job in saving jobs.

Without a doubt, the wage subsidy schemes have saved jobs. Without them, I think most places would be closed."

The extension of the tax warehousing scheme, allowing for a deferral of payments for one year with no interest cost, was another significant measure but Mr Mansworth said businesses were still having to be careful about debt burdens.   

“A lot of debt was just shelved. So while people are still trading, there's still a lot of debt being parked,” he noted. 

As the year comes to a close and new restrictions to come into place, Mr Mansworth said the Government would need to look again at the CRSS, in particular. 

The Irish Hotels Federation earlier in the month said hotels were excluded from accessing the CRSS because the Government was then arguing that people were not being restricted from entering a hotel, and were only restricted from leaving their county in order to enter a hotel.

This was in spite of the fact hotels across the country were projecting a huge drop in revenue in December.

"Just because our doors are open and we’re allowed trade, doesn’t mean we're trading well,” Mr Mansworth said.

“We haven’t been able to trade without restrictions since March. 

We had July and August which was a bit of a shot in the arm, but what people forget is you were still trading at around 50% of what you’d normally do – if you were lucky."   

Mr Mansworth said staycations helped the industry this year but that 60% of room nights in Cork were booked by corporate customers, and many of these visitors will not return until a vaccine is widely available and proven effective.

@NiallGibbons provides update of @TourismIreland 3 stage strategy for recovery #Restart #Rebuild #Redesign & plans to hit the restart button in 2021. Also outlines assessment of key issues & challenges ahead, stressing the need for flexibility, resilience & collaboration https://t.co/EaC1P6rtdE

— Alison Metcalfe (@metcalfealison1) December 18, 2020

Tourism Ireland predicts the recovery from the Covid-19 economic crisis could take over five years, with inbound tourism from long-haul markets unlikely to return until 2022 and beyond.

“I don't think we'll get to pre-Covid levels for three or four years – all going well,” said Mr Eoghan O’Mara Walsh.  

He said that the first three months of 2021 would be "very difficult" but he still hoped international flights would start in the spring and build up through the summer.

“From an international tourist perspective, people tend to make their bookings early in the new year for the following summer. So what I would like is for the Government to change the narrative to 'Ireland is open for business next summer'," he said.

He said that was a very important message that the Government needed to send out to overseas markets, to allow overseas al tourists "to commit" and book their flights.  

“They may not be coming for six months but the crucial thing is that they book," Mr O'Mara Walsh said.  

“We can't afford to lose two summers . . . losing one was nearly fatal, losing two would be fatal,” he warned.