Three years on from its debut as a public holiday in Ireland, opinion is still somewhat divided on the impact the St Brigid’s Day long weekend has had on tourism.
Boosting the tourism sector during a traditionally quiet time was one of the key arguments for honouring the 5th century nun.
Then a minister of state, Martin Heydon – from Kildare, where St Brigid is reputed to have founded an abbey – was among the politicians making the case in 2021 for boosting the hospitality sector with a long weekend in the off season.
He cited the report of a taskforce looking at how to revive tourism after the pandemic that suggested school holidays could be staggered across Ireland to extend the booking season.
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The addition of a new public holiday was ostensibly introduced to reward workers for their efforts throughout the pandemic and because Ireland had fewer public holidays than many other European Union countries.
This is the fourth St Brigid’s bank holiday Monday. National tourism body Fáilte Ireland said the available data is inconclusive when it comes to determining any benefit it has brought to the sector. Dublin Airport said in advance that it was expecting the long weekend to be busy. Many of the nearly 400,000 passengers it expects were due to travel the other way, heading for sunnier parts after what has been a miserable few weeks of weather at home.
At the Fitzgeralds Woodlands House Hotel & Spa in Adare, however, Elaina Fitzgerald, a former chair of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, said hotels and the communities around them have clearly seen the benefit of the additional public holiday.
Heading into the weekend, she said on Thursday, the 98-room hotel had just one unreserved room for Sunday night compared to six at the same point in time last year.
Before St Brigid’s Day weekend was conceived, she said, fewer than half of the hotel’s rooms would have been booked a few days before the first weekend in February. “If I look at the equivalent date in 2018 for example, there were 53 rooms left in the hotel.”
The benefit of the increased bookings spills into other areas of the resort hotel, with dining and other services also benefiting, she said. There is a positive impact on the wider community, as local restaurants and bars gain customers from extra guests.
The timing is good, she believes. The long weekend follows what can be a month of self-restraint, voluntary or otherwise, following the financially and, perhaps, physically draining Christmas period.
“It feels nice to have something to look forward to,” she said.
Available industry data suggests the holiday provides a significant boost, she said, with bookings across her locality running at roughly double what they are for the other weekends in February.
At the Westport Woods hotel, general manager Michael Lennon said bookings were up for the weekend, although it was tricky to separate out what was due to the holiday and what could be attributed to the fact Dublin’s footballers were playing Mayo in nearby Castlebar on Sunday. Perhaps it was a mixture of the two, he said.
“Looking at the figures, we are stronger this weekend – but Dublin playing Mayo on the Sunday would be part of that.”
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Westport is very reliant on the home market at this time of year and, like Fitzgerald, he was not seeing any significant additional business from overseas.
There is value for customers, because hotels are seeking to drum up business, he said.
The bump does not greatly extend to those selling activities, said Brendan Kenny of the Association for Adventure Tourism. The weather at this time of year means many operators will not even open and, for those that do, the storms of the last week would likely have hampered potential advance bookings.
Dublin pubs, meanwhile, may not have fared much better, with Willie Aherne, owner of the Palace and Bill Aherne bars in the city centre, saying there has been no particular benefit from the introduction of the holiday. However, the racing at Leopardstown was expected to bring some people from England, making for a decent Sunday trade this year.
This is a view echoed by Adrian Cummins of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, who said members outside Dublin say they see significantly more benefit from the holiday than those in the capital.
If anywhere should benefit from St Brigid’s Day, of course, it should be Kildare, which, like Dublin, is hosting a multitude of events to mark the occasion.
“There’s an incredible programme of activities lined up across the county,” said Aline Fitzgerald, general manager of the recently opened Shackleton Experience in Athy.
“We’re closed on Sundays and Mondays, but we had a strong take up on bookings for Saturday, indicating that people were planning to travel to the county over the weekend.”
