Tourism chief seeks plan for hotel beds housing refugees 

35% of all the hotel, guest house, and B&B beds available for tourism have been contracted by the Government and taken out of supply this summer

Eoghan O'Mara Walsh, chief executive of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation.

The head of the Irish tourism business group has said the Government will need to do some serious thinking on ways of making good the huge number of hotel beds taken out of the industry outside Dublin for Ukrainian and asylum seekers. 

Eoghan O'Mara Walsh, chief executive of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, or ITIC, said the industry welcomes the humanitarian response, but that 35% of all the hotel, guest house, and B&B beds available for tourism in the Republic have been contracted by the Government and taken out of supply this summer.  

The Government needs "a comprehensive plan" on ways to make up for the shortages because it was relying too much on tourism to supply urgently needed accommodation, Mr O'Mara Walsh said. 

The West and regions outside Dublin accounted for a disproportionate share because of the preponderance of four-star and five-star hotels in the capital which have had no need to sign up to the voluntary scheme.  

"And that 35% is unevenly spread with the bulk of the beds on the West coast, so Donegal is up at 50% and Clare at over 40%, and in Kerry, it is nearly 40% of their beds are gone," he said. 

"These are big tourism hot spots, and it is ironic in a way because the hotels are OK because they are getting cheques from the Government on a monthly basis for the services they provide, but all the downstream tourism businesses - the tourism attractions, the restaurants, ancillary tourism services, the bars, tour guides, the tourism shops - are all missing out on the tourism dollar," he said.  

Mr O'Mara Walsh cited Fáilte Ireland estimates that for every €1 a tourist spends on accommodation, they spend €2.50 on ancillary tourism services. "That €2.50 is obviously not finding its way into the local economy which is an enormous challenge", with the missing beds estimated to cost the industry €1.1bn over the year, he said.  

Bed stock

The further irony, he said, was that demand was strong, access to all the main airports was good, and with the dollar having risen against the euro, there were a lot of American tourists willing to spend "but we can't service that demand because we do not have the bed stock because of Government". 

He said fewer hotels in Dublin have signed up to the accommodation scheme because they probably get more business on a year-round for their four-star and five-star properties, and most of the missing beds are from three-star properties. 

ITIC believes that without new initiatives the shortage of hotel beds was going to last and even if the war in Ukraine were to end "there were no homes for those poor people". 

"The feeling is that the American market will be OK this year because air capacity has increased and Americans tend to stay in the four- and five-star hotels which have not been affected," Mr O'Mara Walsh said. 

"The big problem markets are Britain and continental Europe," he said.