Ireland Hotel, Tourism & Leisure Market Update, April 2024

Horwath HTL Ireland are delighted to share the latest Hotel, Tourism & Leisure Market Update, where we take a look at the wider tourism sector and provide hotel commentary, sectoral updates and noteworthy news.

In this edition, we examine how the market is performing, some of the challenges facing the industry, pipeline and supply, transactions, and hospitality news.

Tourism performance
Despite several significant challenges, the hotel sector performed well in 2023. The first few months of 2024 have seen a slowdown in RevPAR performance in Dublin and Galway, with Limerick showing the highest growth and Cork remaining stable.

Hotel transactions
2023 turned out to be a solid year in the volume of hotel transactions, driving the momentum into 2024 where several transactions have been signed early in the new year.

Hotel supply
The Dublin market has seen an increase of around 4,500 bedrooms since the beginning of 2019, with three new hotels opening since the beginning of the year. We estimate that a further 1,400 rooms are due to open by the end of 2024, although the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC) has raised concerns about the use of the hotel sector for humanitarian purposes.

Tourism
31.9m passengers were welcomed at Dublin Airport in 2023, with Great Britain and Europe providing the largest cohort of visitors to Ireland, followed by the USA and Canada. The impact of rising costs has had a detrimental impact on the hotel sector, with ITIC’s recent report estimating a payroll cost of €1.4bn to hit the tourism and hospitality sector by 2026 as a result of Government policy.

Hospitality news
Crowe, together with JLL, co-hosted the annual Irish Hotel Sector Briefing in February. Over 200 guests were in attendance to hear from guest speaker Keith Evans, founder, CEO, and chairman of Lifestyle Hospitality Capital (LHC), about their acquisition of a majority stake in The Dean Hotel Group.