Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 March 2023

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media

Challenges Facing Providers of Tourist Accommodation in Ireland: Discussion

Mr. Paul Kelly:

Specifically, my comment about "under" hotels was about Dublin. The good news is there are about 3,500 more hotel bedrooms, which are pretty firm as they are already in the advanced stages of the development process, on-site, etc. That will be an approximate increase of 15% in the stock in Dublin. The last time we did this analysis, we said that, in addition to what was in the pipeline, we needed approximately another 1,100 hotel bedrooms in Dublin to meet our projections of future demand. We have not been able to repeat that modelling yet because we are coming out of Covid-19. It is probably not far off a requirement of approximately another 1,000 to 1,500, on top of the 3,500 already in train in the Dublin area. In order to develop tourism and other regions, there is a requirement for accommodation but not necessarily hotels because alternative forms of accommodation can sometimes be a better economic solution in some of the more rural areas.