Insufficient Accommodation Hampers Ireland's US Tourism Demand

Ireland must increase its hotel capacity to meet the demands of the United States.

SchengenVisaInfo.com reported that Siobhan MacManamy, interim chief executive officer of Tourism Ireland, made the comments. She also said the country could do more in terms of hotel accommodations.

According to the RTE article, her comments came after the launch of Aer Lingus' new route between Dublin, Ohio and Cleveland. This was the first new transatlantic flight since 2019.

"The flights are back to about 102 per cent. Where we are this July will be just ahead of where we were in 2019, but we are down to between 20 and 30 per cent on accommodation in the peak summer months," she mentioned.

McManamy says that extending the tourist season in the US could help to solve the capacity problem.

"Certainly, the industry would tell us there is a strong February, March, April from the market this year," she said.

McManamy said that there is documentation that more accommodation has been provided for humanitarian reasons in certain counties.

She also added that there were other shortages on the market, including chauffeur-driven vehicles.

McManamy said that visitors from the United Kingdom are more likely to be short-term guests or to visit family and friends. Visitors from the United States spend nearly twice as much.

In Ireland, earlier this month, the authorities reported that a total 10,000 tourism jobs were displaced due to a shortage of hotel beds in this country, which had been contracted by the state to accommodate refugees.

Recent analysis by the government has introduced such estimations. According to a report in the Irish Times, the Ministers' statistics showed that 20 towns in Ireland had the greatest impact, including Killarney where the revenue effect was estimated to be more than EUR100m and 2,700 jobs were displaced.

Leo Varadkar said earlier that Ireland is short more than 250.000 homes after it has to accommodate an important number of asylum seekers and refugees, leading to homelessness.

Source: schengenvisainfo.com