Conference rates cut for hoteliers

YEARS of haggling with customers has obviously taught the country’s hotel owners and managers a thing or two about nabbing a bargain.

So when hundreds of owners and managers said they could not attend the hotel industry’s largest annual conference, the organisers responded in the only way they could — the offer of a reduced rate.

And it seems the Irish Hotels Federation’s (IHF) decision to slash conference prices for the first time in its 72-year history has done the trick.

The conference, entitled Rising to the Challenges, has been described by the IHF as the most important in the history of the federation and is due to take place in The Malton Hotel in Killarney on March 2 and 3.

In a memo sent to members on Friday — in light of just 80 bookings — the organisation said the number of people who have booked for the conference was “most disappointing”.

The IHF said, as a result, it was slashing the price of the full conference from €395 to €250 while working session prices have been cut from €260 to €150.

In the memo IHF president Matthew Ryan said while he appreciated that many hotel managers are “totally immersed in running their operations” he was of the view that “many managers are concerned about the attitude of hotel owners to their being absent from the business”.

IHF chief executive John Power said that since the memo went out on Friday there has been a “reasonably good reaction” from hoteliers.