Lonely Planet article on skyrocketing hotel and car rental costs worries Tourism Ireland

They said there were “low level feedbacks” on the cost of car rental as well as hotel room costs from business partners and on social media.

However, Tourism Ireland said it had so far largely escaped negative mainstream media coverage in a briefing paper.

The country-by-country special report on rising costs says that trading partners in France are particularly concerned about “persistent price and availability issues”.

Operators in France saw hotel room allocations canceled as well as “very high weekday rates for Dublin city center hotels”.

“Restaurant price increases were also flagged as a concern,” the report said.

Additionally, some tour operators have reported that major attractions are no longer accepting group bookings – an essential part of group travel for vacationers.

In Belgium and the Netherlands, tour operators have reported problems with canceled hotel rooms due to being reassigned to refugees fleeing Ukraine.

The special report said: “Tour operators reported that the additional costs are often borne by themselves and hotels, as a proportion of these sales were pre-booked by consumers (when fares were lower ). Rental cars are a challenge in terms of cost and availability.

From the United States, there have been returns on the offer of accommodation and car rental.

Airport queue and baggage problems

There had also been media coverage of the queuing and baggage issues that have plagued Dublin Airport in recent months.

The report adds: “The markets with the highest number of messages received on these topics were from Italy, BeneLux [Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg] and the United States. Complaints currently represent only about 2% of weekly engagements. Regarding car rental, the report indicates that rental prices are an issue in many countries and continue to receive extensive media coverage.

However, while high car prices here were sometimes used as an example, Ireland was not identified “as an exception on the subject”.

Tourism Ireland was also concerned about an article from the travel bible planet alone, who warned tourists of ‘skyrocketing hotel costs’ and how renting a car would make a ‘significant dent’ in a visitor’s budget.

An internal email said: “This has been an alert for me on Twitter so I’ll keep an eye on it – the risk of it being amplified across countries as a tourist topic.”

A colleague responded by saying: ‘Thanks, we’ll… keep an eye out if this gets picked up in non-Irish media.’

In a briefing note, Tourism Ireland said the country-by-country report – which was published under FOI – was part of a weekly series prepared by its internal strategy and information team.