20,000 log on to avail of hotel breaks for only €1

HOTELIERS in west Cork received such a stampede for €1 hotel breaks that they’re going to run a similar promotion in south Wales as part of celebrations heralding the reopening of the Cork-Swansea ferry route.

Nine hotels in the Clonakilty area are offering 100 people the opportunity to grab a night’s B&B for two for just €1.

Bargain-hunters were up early yesterday clicking their keyboards as they logged on in the hope of winning one of the bargain-basement breaks for next month.

Within an hour of opening the site at 8am yesterday it crashed under the weight of 2,500 entries from all over Ireland. By 3pm that figure had risen to 15,000 and by close of business at 8pm it was 20,000.

Clonakilty District Chamber of Tourism came up with the idea to celebrate the MV Julia’s maiden voyage.

Clonakilty was previously awarded Ireland’s first European Destination of Excellence title by the EU.

The chamber of tourism chairman Jim Daly said they were astonished by the interest.

“Our ambition was to get 5,000 hits on the website, so this was absolutely phenomenal. It’s crazy stuff, actually. Needless to say we are absolutely delighted with the response,” Mr Daly said.

He said that the idea was to highlight what is good about the region and that had certainly seemed to have worked.

“More than 50% of those who logged on said they would be happy to get newsletter updates from us and that was our objective,” he said.

“Our usual monthly hit on our website is 5,000.”

Clonakilty District Chamber of Tourism will meet today with hoteliers in the area to step up their marketing campaign.

“We are planning to run a similar competition offering such discount rates, but this time exclusively to people living in South Wales. Plans for this are already well advanced,” Mr Daly said.

The hotels offering the €1 breaks are the Lodge & Spa at Inchydoney Island, the Celtic Ross Hotel, The Quality Hotel, O’Donovan’s Hotel, The Emmet Hotel, The Clonakilty Hotel, The Imperial Hotel, Fernhill House Hotel and Dunmore House Hotel.

The ferry service was withdrawn three years ago, with the south-west region losing tourism revenue of about €150 million.