Hotels: The hotel industry will see growth this year with the opening of 20 new hotels around the country, following two years of stagnation, when numbers of hotels fell.
In addition, the number of new rooms in existing hotels will increase nationwide accommodation to more than 46,000 rooms in 870 properties.
Hotels that will open this year include a 225-room hotel at Croke Park, Dublin 1; a 200-room five-star hotel in Killarney, the Brehon, owned by the Gleneagle Group; The Clarion at Liffey Valley in west Dublin will be completed this year and the Clarion Cork, with 192 bedrooms, should be open in December.
The Somerton in Castleknock, with 144 rooms, will join the Tower Hotel Group Castleknock, with 230 bedrooms. Jurys Inn will open on Parnell Street, Dublin 1, with 253 rooms. Ballybunion Golf Course will open late in the year, but golfers will be disappointed to hear that the planned hotel in Doonbeg, Co Clare, will not go ahead until next year. Naas will get the 102-room Osprey Hotel and Lawlors will open a 35-bedroom premises. A 25-bedroom hotel is to open on Inismore in the Aran Islands; in Leitrim, the 10-bedroom Leitrim Marina Hotel is to open.
Galway will get its second five-star hotel with the opening of a 100-bedroom hotel at the Wellpark Retail Park. Its developer, Edward Holdings, will also build a similar-size hotel in Drogheda at the Scotch Hall shopping and leisure complex.
This expansion in the industry is as a result of changes that were made to the Finance Act 2003. Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, changed the write-off period for hotel capital allowances from seven years to 25 years, bringing hotels into line with the general manufacturing allowances. The changes caused a flurry of activity in the industry, where to avail of the write-off period all projects must be completed by December 31st, 2004. All applications for newbuilds and extensions to existing properties had to be lodged by May 31st, 2003; by now, many of the applications have worked their way through the planning process and construction work on new and existing hotels is under way all over the country.
Gillian Bowler, chairman of Fáilte Ireland, is confident that tourism numbers will reach record levels in 2004. But provision of a new terminal in Dublin Airport, a national conference centre and a sports stadium will be crucial to the ongoing success of the tourism industry. Last year saw a growth of 4 per cent in overseas visitors, taking the figures to 6.1 million, and a 5 per cent increase in revenue from domestic and overseas tourism to €5.2 billion.
Much of the growth has hinged on increasing access to Ireland. Last year was a record year for new routes and services, with 52 introduced in Cork, Dublin and Shannon resulting in an increase of more than a million passengers through the three airports. In the first six months of 2004, 20 additional routes, most to Europe, will come into service: Aer Lingus is opening in Venice, Bilbao, Lyon, Valencia, Dubrovnik, and Warsaw; Hapag Lloyd will fly from Hamburg and Stuttgart to Dublin, German Wings from Cologne, Basiq Air from Rotterdam and BmiBaby from Manchester to Knock.
Existing hotels adding rooms this year include Kellys of Rosslare, the Bush in Carrick-on-Shannon, Newpark in Kilkenny, Park House Galway, Harvey's Point in Donegal, the Imperial and Ambassador in Cork and in Clare the Aberdeen Arms, Clare Inn and the Old Ground. In Dublin, the City West hotel plans to add 167 rooms, the Green Isle in Clondalkin, 114, The Fitzwilliam on St Stephen's Green, 14, the Morrison on Ormond Quay, 40, and the Holiday Inn on Pearse Street, 11.
Since 1996 the number of hotels in Ireland has increased from 713 to 846.
