Is a Dublin hotel room really dearer than London, Paris and Rome?

Could it really be possible that Dublin is the second most expensive place in Europe to find a hotel room and that it is now within touching distance of becoming the most expensive city on the continent?

A recent pricing survey from Hotel Reservations Services (HRS), an international online booking engine, suggests that not only is dear old Dublin incredibly dear by European standards, but it is also among the most expensive places in the world to find a bed for the night.

In its latest pricing survey, HRS said the cost of a night in a hotel in Dublin jumped by 9.2 per cent - or more than 10 times the rate of inflation - in just 12 months taking the average price of a room in the capital to an eye-watering €213.

This time last year the average price was €195, the survey suggested.

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The most expensive city in Europe was said to be Oslo where the average price was €217 meaning Dublin is dangerously close to earning itself the most unwanted of price tags.

The third priciest hotel rooms in Europe were found in London, with the average put at €190 while a room in Copenhagen will set a traveller back €175. Stockholm on €154 and Paris on €148 round out the top five places.

The price of a hotel room in Cork was €118, while Limerick rooms were €112 and rooms in Galway a euro cheaper than that.

HRS said that hotel bookings through its engines in the period April 1st to June 30th 2017 that were not cancelled were surveyed and including both single as well as double rooms, with and without breakfast, in 1-star to 5-star hotels.

While a price spike of almost 10 per cent is hardly good news for travellers coming to Dublin, the price spike in other cities across Europe were even more dramatic.

The average price of a room in Lisbon was said to be €113,, an increase of just under 19 per cent over the course of 12 months. Madrid recorded price increases of 17 per cent taking the average to €117 per night while Prague recorded price increases of 15 per cent, although the average there is a considerably more modest €92 per night).

The largest price increase recorded anywhere in the world was in Toronto where room rates jumped a staggering 40 per cent year-on-year with the price of a room there put at €161.

New York was declared the most expensive city in the world with the average cost of rooms put at €274, up 13 per cent with Washington in second place. Anyone keen to spend a night in the US capital would have to shell out an average of €253 - up 6.8 per cent.

The cheapest overnight rate of the key destinations surveyed by HRS was Kuala Lumpur where a room costs just €52, down from €67 last year.

While the HRS pricing survey makes for alarming reading for anyone coming to Ireland, doubts as to its accuracy have repeatedly being cast by the industry close to home.

The Irish Hotel Federation has dismissed the HRS figures and said they are out of line with actual rooms rates as they do not take account the variety of sources of bookings including directly through individual hotel's websites, group bookings and over the phone.

“ The figures reported do not reflect the average rooms rates in Dublin during this period and are not representative of the approximately 19,000 hotel rooms available for sale every day in Dublin,” a spokesman said. “The IHF notes that industry figures show an average rate of between €130 to €135 for the first half of 2017.

Certainly the report appears to be an outlier. Earlier this year a report on global room rates published by PriceWaterhouse Coopers forecast that the average daily rate for a Dublin hotel stay would be €131 this year, an increase of 15 per cent on the 2016 figure and up from €95 in 2014.