Is the hotel boom just in Dublin? No, it's not. It has reached much further afield and has implications beyond what might be imagined in the fair city.
From about now on, Irish holiday makers will be making tracks. Many of them will be heading to west Cork - a favourite haunt - and many of them too will take a break in Clonakilty, a town that has changed in recent years beyond all recognition. The local urban district council has a strict policy about where, when and how developments should take place. It also has an eye to the future and to future development. Consider this. The urban population of Clonakilty is about 3,000 people. But there are now about 4,000 beds available to tourists who might visit the town.
Why has this happened? Because, say the investors, this part of west Cork is on the up-and-up and the Celtic Tiger has actually begun to bite.
According to Maurice Manning, Clonakilty's town clerk, there were about 1,000 tourist beds in the town three years ago; now there are 4,000. Local housing is difficult to get, not to mention holiday homes, and everywhere there are signs of affluence.
Clonakilty has become a satellite town within easy reach of Cork. The beaches are better, the air seems nicer, and the pace calmer. So if it takes less than 45 minutes each morning to get a clear run into the city before hitting the log jam, and less to get back again, the choice is simple.
This has been a major motivating factor for those with money to spend. Clonakility has never known such riches in terms of places to stay. Local people are asking who will fill the beds, and by the end of this tourist season, we may have the answer. This will be the test.
The Flemming family has invested £10 million in the beachfront Inchydoney Hotel with 70 bedrooms. On style, facilities and elegance, nothing has been spared. Fernhill House, owned by Michael O'Neill, has been refurbished at a cost of £1.5 million and a further £1 million has been spent on the family-owned O'Donovan's Hotel, which is about to open with a huge restaurant and new bar facilities. The Dunmore House Hotel has also been refurbished at a cost of £1.5 million and is another family-owned venture.
The Strand Hotel is one of the newest in this small west Cork town. It opened in mid-March after a £2 million investment involving private capital and has all the modern facilities. The Emmet Hotel, in the famed square built in 1785, was reopened three years ago after £1.6 million investment.
There is also the Clonakilty Park Hotel, which has been developed at a cost of £3.5 million by two Clonakility businessmen, Eugene Scally and Michael McCarthy.
There is one other crucial factor in the phenomenal growth of the tourist sector in the town. A technology park close to the centre of Clonakilty is in the process of being developed. The UDC anticipates that within less than a decade, it will have created more than 2,000 new jobs.
It all speaks of a new found confidence. The latest hotel developments, together with the existing tourism infrastructure, can now provide 4,000 tourist beds in the town. The expectation is that they will be filled.
