Eoghan Corry: Ticket prices for Adare's Ryder Cup could leave golf fans and hoteliers in the rough
The Ryder Cup is a sizeable circus with many rings. It will deliver 9,000 staff and 1,500 volunteers to Adare, one and a half times the size of Apple’s workforce in Cork.
A lot of birdies have flown over River Maigue since Adare was first announced as host of the 2027 Ryder Cup.
The announcement was made six years ago, before the world of hospitality and the world as we knew it landed in a bunker. Yet, it is surprising how much of the 2019 narrative still hums in the background. An odd-shaped tournament, a matchplay battle between artificially concocted European and American selections in the otherwise self-absorbed sport of golf, creates odd-shaped problems.
Firstly, there is not much of a team tradition to build on in golf. For 360 days of the year, continental, national and regional identity is rendered almost completely irrelevant among athletes who compete for some of the largest financial rewards in professional sport.
Then we come to the Ryder Cup’s recurring golfbag-in-the-room problem, that Europe takes the tournament more seriously than America.
To this must be added the question of Adare’s infrastructure. The overdue bypass was proposed when Payne Stewart was still sinking putts and is, as yet, unbuilt. While the Ryder Cup will celebrate its centenary in 2027 (check out the rousing online videos), the famous bottleneck bypass will be celebrating 30 years since it first went to the drawing board.
And then, most importantly, the issue of hotel rates. Spikey in Ireland at the best of times, how high will they climb when the circus comes to town?
The Ryder Cup is a sizeable circus with many rings. It will deliver 9,000 staff and 1,500 volunteers to Adare, one and a half times the size of Apple’s workforce in Cork.
The last European staging, in Rome in 2023, generated 318,000 commercial bed nights generating €34m and an additional €72m in spectator spending. Broadcasters will need about 1,000 rooms a night. There are 1,700 guests a day on high-yield corporate sponsor programmes. Spectators are transported by 450 buses.
In Italy, local authorities laid out 15km of new roads. About 1,000 media will be seeking longer-term accommodation and renting out local houses, although the far-fetched prices being talked about are rarely realised.
Most people agree it is worth the fuss, although the multipliers used by the organisers and the tourist board to measure the value of the Ryder Cups are usually overstated, simplistic, and unverifiable (but equally uncontradictable).
This week, the organisers of the Ryder Cup sent a message to Ireland hoteliers, delivered in person, face to face at the annual conference of the Irish Hotels Federation at the Gleneagles Hotel in Killarney.
Alan Evans, who also spoke at the Irish Self Catering Federation conference last November, said he was surprised at the “elevated” rates already fixed for the tournament.
“If you are driving a very high rate for your properties, you also need to ensure that the guest experience matches that rate," he said.
“I want to offer a word of caution: Rome [hosts in 2023] has 75,000 hotel rooms available year-round and consistently drives a high rate. Similarly, the rates in New York [hosts next September] are already distorted due to the event coinciding with the UN General Assembly.
“As Ireland aims to attract other major sports events in the future, we can learn a lot from this process. We need to apply constructive feedback to support rights holders and draw other major events to our country.
“For the hotel community, I think we are here to protect you. As I mentioned earlier, we are here to help you overcome some of the challenges, but we do need commitment — commitment on room numbers and rates.”
Mr Evans acknowledged the Ryder Cup itself has a track record of its own on this issue to cope with.
He told the conference "ticket prices will align with those of major sports events; they won't be the $750 they are in New York this year, but they will reflect what people expect to pay for a 10-hour event”.
The message was softened for the hotelier audience in mind, and nuanced but unmistakable. What does “elevated” even mean? Is multiplying a room rate by 12 “elevated?”.
Hoteliers are precious about their pricing strategy. Dynamic pricing, a term borrowed from airlines like Ryanair, is what the hoteliers call their freedom to charge more for prime-time bookings.
As one general manager, speaking in the margins of the conference put it: “The revenue manager is now the most important member of the hotel team, often more important than the GM”.
Hoteliers have a list of reasons for high prices: elevated electricity costs, elevated local authority charges, elevated staff costs, elevated bureaucracy and regulation, and elevated standards and expectations.
And elevated margins of their revenue being extracted by online monsters based in Connecticut, Seattle or Amsterdam, bleeding 23% commission from every booking.
When the sun shines and a shiny trophy like the Ryder Cup reflects that sunshine, it is their opportunity to make the hoteliers' version of hay. But they remain sensitive to criticism. When the word “gouging” was used at another recent travel conference, there was almost a walk-out.
The key to keeping rates down is usually supply and Adare is nicely positioned in this regard. There are 5,545 hotel beds in Co Limerick, 6,333 in Clare and, most importantly, 13,527 in Co Kerry. Killarney, the capital of tourism, should be the lifeline for the fans, supplying most of those 320,000 bed nights.
Airbnb and self-catering homes would normally be expected to come to the rescue. In both cases, these options are in danger of being constrained by legislation designed to release rental properties for the long-term market and solve a housing crisis, a whole issue that has to be thrashed out between politicians and lobby groups.
The tournament, despite the grandiose claims of the organisers, really matters in just one market — the United States.
These are the highest spenders and longest stayers on Ireland’s tourism dashboard, and Ireland already has 30 direct routes to the USA, with more to be announced between now and 2027. For our hoteliers, this is the equivalent of all our Garth Brooks, Taylor Swift and Oasis concerts put together.
This all comes with a rider (or perhaps a Ryder?). Tickets. The date for the tournament has not yet been announced, although Mr Evans promised he would do so in April. The handover to Ireland will come in September in Long Island, after which the real planning can start.
Mr Evans told delegates Ryder Cup Europe and the agency they control tightly, Ryder Cup Travel Services, should be the only ones seeking accommodation at this time.
“Many companies might claim to have access to the Ryder Cup, but unless this information comes from us, it may not be true.”
The ticket distribution has not yet been finalised. An expensive hotel bed is worthless without a ticket.
Therein lies the crunch for hoteliers and golf fans alike, the prospect of landing in the rough rather than the fairway.
For those hoping to cash in on Adare’s Ryder Cup, the practice round could end up mattering as much as the tournament itself.
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