Bedfinders is not a place to snuggle under the doubleduvets. Nor does it order them for you, as one frustrated couple discovered recently. Bedfinders is an accommodation reservation and tourist information service, which can find you a bed in all manner of corners throughout the country, for a booking fee of just £1. They haven't been asked for a four-poster bed yet, but such a request wouldn't surprise them, says managing director Shane Hurley.
Although it only opened its Dublin branch on Dawson Street last March, he's fully aware that the city is the stag capital of Europe. "If there's any hen or stag nights booking with us they are always very friendly, and they don't seem to mind the set-up of the beds. But everyone is fed up with stag parties - especially in the Temple Bar area," he says.
Bedfinders, which also opened a branch in Kilkenny last year, takes its customers from the business and tourist markets and many are UK-based. Now it wants to encourage more Irish people to use its touchtype system, where customers can view its range of three- and four-star hotels on screen in the English language and soon in French, Italian and German.
People also sometimes have special requirements. "In one case a woman called and asked us not to phone back because her husband was there and she was going off for the weekend." Then there are the customers who want to sleep on the ground floor, the ones whose picky diets need attending to, and the fact that a few places won't take very young children.
Things aren't always a bed of roses. Bedfinders had one UK customer complaining that she was awoken at 6 a.m. by the noise of a pneumatic drill. "It would be more like an act of God to stop it, but I did try to help her because, though some people may laugh, it's a serious complaint when sleep is being disturbed."
Although some people think American tourists are rich fat cats, they're on a budget just like everyone else, Mr Hurley says. "They usually go away for 3 months and can't blow all their cash in the first fortnight or they'd be camping out in cardboard city for the last few days," he says.
"We also have a gay hotel which will be put up on our system. We cater for all types, that's the way of the world - we're not here to judge anyone." As they have 15 hostels on their system in Dublin, Cork and Kilkenny they do get students contacting them. "God love them - they need accommodation but we're not that kind of market. They're looking for apartments to share but ours are executive apartments and townhouses and they range from £200 a week." Bedfinders can also help animal lovers. In Kilkenny, they stabled horses for customers who were attending riding events. "We also have two cottages with a deer farm and shooting rights, where the owner's children play music for the guests at the fireside. Two Scandinavians stayed there and wanted the animals' heads sticking through the window."
