Ms Elaina Fitzgerald Kane:

I wish to share some information in regard to our own business, which is a four-star family-run hotel. It is one of three hotels in our area, where tourism is very important. To give members an idea, I got some annualised comparisons of what we spent on food, beverages and insurance on the difference between 2019 and 2022. Our food purchases were up by 64%, our beverage purchases were up by 52% and insurance was up by 31%. I could give a number of other figures. All those figures are much higher than what pricing has increased by, according to the SDR, which is internationally recognised data, at 26%. There is no excuse for pricing outside of what the value proposition is. We have heard plenty of stories about that. The reality is, if we take the hotel piece alone, there are 64,000 hotel rooms throughout the country, of which 23,400 are in Dublin and of which a small minority have been coming to the fore in terms of attention because of the rates they are offering. The average room rate is €143, however, and nobody talks about the rooms that are sold below that price. You could stay in Dublin tonight for €123. For some people, that is outside of their budget range and I fully acknowledge that. We have to look at the statistics in terms of the numbers. We have written to our members to stress the point around value and we continue to do that.

We urge people to vote with their feet. If something does not represent value to them, they should not book it. Senator Cassells raised an important point about the domestic tourism visitor. As somebody who greatly enjoys holidaying around Ireland with my family, one thing that Covid-19 taught me was to place more value on our time. I book much further in advance now. Not everybody can do that. When we are booking, we need to adopt the same mindset as if we were booking overseas. We need to change our patterns in regard to booking early. That is not to say that value will be delivered every time. It does not mean we will not hear about prices that are off the scale and ridiculous, because that sometimes happens. Equally, there are people who genuinely strive to deliver the best possible tourism experience at a proposition that has a value when it comes to price. We cannot all be branded with the same iron. That is happening, I believe, repeatedly. We try to call out ridiculous pricing where we see it but we cannot forget the fact that the hotel piece alone is 64,000 rooms, not to mention all the other beds throughout the country. We need to be careful that we do not sweep everybody in and tar them with the same brush. The reality is, in our business, the increase in the inputs is significantly more and sometimes double the actual increase in pricing over the years. We need to be mindful of that.

In regard to the data on the average increase of 26%, I have not seen that in my own business. If we look at that as a regional issue, it might tell a different story.