Booming number of hotels increases pressure

One way to pass the time when walking down a Dublin street - if you can't think of anyone to ring on your mobile - is to try to spot the hotel which wasn't there the last time you walked down it.

In the past few years, hotels seem to appear overnight like mushrooms. The statistics bear out the picture of steady, strong growth. At present, Dublin has 138 hotels with 10,742 bedrooms, according to Marnie Corscadden of Tourism Quality Services Ireland, which registers new hotels. Since 1994, Dublin has gained 59 hotels and 4,610 bedrooms. For the year 2000, according to Bord Failte figures, another 16 hotels with 1,470 bedrooms are in the pipeline, and that's in addition to the 254 guest rooms and suites which the Four Seasons will bring to Ballsbridge next spring.

Dublin city centre alone has several important developments on the way, including the 180-bedroom Westin Hotel in Fleet Street/College Green, a planned 197-bedroom hotel at Parnell Street and a 149-bedroom hotel at Capel Street/North King Street.

But are we in danger of getting too much of a good thing, and has the capital got as many hotels as it needs?

Merrion Hotel manager Peter McCann believes Dublin is in danger of suffering not only from over-supply but from poor quality in some of the hotels that are being built.

"Already there's a slowing in growth in hotel users," he says. "Supply is outstripping demand."

But his main concern is with quality and the damage which poor quality in hotels could do to Dublin's tourism industry.

"Too many are not quality-driven," he says. "There are people jumping on the back of the success of the tourist industry. They are coming in and developing products which are not up to the standards we would demand ourselves of the industry."

The problem, he says, is that if a visitor has a bad experience in a Dublin hotel, five years later "he won't remember the name of the hotel but he'll remember the name of the city".

The Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Dr McDaid, hopes the country will have eight million visitors by 2004, compared with an expected five million this year. But, says Mr McCann, "we won't achieve that if we are not driven by quality".

Anxious not to sound negative about the rapid growth in the number of new hotels - his own hotel is two years old - he says it is a "hugely positive" development "but if it is allowed to run amok, all the negative things will take over".

At the heart of the problem, he believes is the fact that "there is no central control on the granting of hotel licences".

He sees a need for a body "that would be responsible for ensuring and enforcing quality, so that if you don't meet strict criteria, you don't get your licence, full stop".

Right now, licences go to "the guy with the biggest amount of money". But money, he says, "isn't a guarantee of quality".

Also sounding a cautious note is John Power of the Irish Hotels Federation. Trying to work out whether Dublin has enough hotels, he says, is like asking how long is a piece of string. His feeling, though, is that Dublin "is there or thereabouts in terms of matching room numbers with the business that's there".

"People bringing on new properties would have to have a clear marketing plan in place and know where they will get business from. Business buoyancy has underwritten the level of occupancy for a number of years. If demand does not keep up with supply, it affects room yield."

What of the belief in some quarters that the National Conference Centre will create a new source of business for hotels?

It will, agrees Mr Power, "make a difference, but you must remember there will be two hotels as part of that complex and another hotel is being developed nearby".

It is difficult to estimate what will be the effect on the conference business of other hotels, but the National Conference Centre, he says, "has to get its customers from somewhere".

Getting funding for new hotels, he says, is becoming more difficult. "The people putting up the money and the banks are more circumspect and careful in deciding to put risk capital on the line."

But despite fears that Dublin is in danger of becoming "over-hotelled", Bord Failte figures suggest a more positive view.

Room occupancy and bed occupancy rates have been holding up well over the past few years despite the rising number of hotels.

Room occupancy rates for the first half of 1997 were 76 per cent, for the first half of 1998 they were 73 per cent and for the first half of this year they were 75 per cent. The proportion of beds occupied in these periods was 55 per cent, 51 per cent and 52 per cent, respectively.

The Dublin figures are substantially higher than the national average of 64 per cent for room occupancy and 46 per cent for bed occupancy.

These figures, it should be noted, are derived from a panel of 160 hotels.

According to Bord Failte's John Brown, Dublin had a lot of catching up to do in terms of capacity over the past few years and the growth in demand is still staying slightly ahead of the growth in capacity.

So far this year, he says, bed numbers have grown by 11 per cent and sales of beds are up by 13 per cent. These figures have been achieved despite some disappointing sales in the summer.