Traditional B&Bs are under pressure from hotels. Fáilte Ireland is running workshops to help them fight back. Rosita Boland sits in on one.

'Take a nice picture of your breakfast buffet for your website," is one of the suggestions Steve Dudley of Fáilte Ireland has for the assembled people from the B&B trade attending his one-day workshop in Ardee, Co Louth, about marketing themselves via the internet.

Broadcaster Derek Davis would possibly not agree with Dudley that putting a nice picture of your breakfast buffet on your B&B website will help to pull in the punters. At a recent food tourism seminar in Drumshanbo, Co Leitrim, Davis said many tourists "gag" when faced with the full Irish breakfast, with "deep-fried sausages" and fried eggs "which are started at 6am and kept alive in lukewarm fat".

It's no secret that the Irish B&B trade is not in a healthy state. In 2000, there were 4,124 approved B&Bs in the State. There are currently 3,110; a drop of a quarter in less than a decade - a period when the number of tourists visiting the State was increasing. From May to October in 2005, B&Bs had a room occupancy of 47 per cent.

To help boost trade, Fáilte Ireland has been running one-day workshops around the country for the last six weeks, aimed at increasing booking via the internet. By the time the workshops end this week, Fáilte Ireland estimates one in three of all B&B owners will have attended one of the workshops.

The 12 people gathered in the Leader office in Ardee run B&Bs in counties Meath, Monaghan, Louth and Sligo. Most of them have been in the trade for many years. While some have minor web presence via links from other sites, only a few of them have their own designated website. Some, such as Maureen Treanor of Emyvale, Co Monaghan and Roland Bond of Navan, Co Meath, don't have any presence on the web at all. All of them want more guests, and they're hoping Dudley's workshop - which proves to be highly informative and interesting - can help.

At one point in the day, there's a heated debate about the advantages of staying in a B&B as opposed to a hotel.

"Americans want to talk to Irish people and they don't get that in hotels with all the foreign workers," says Treanor. "They get a taste of Ireland by staying with us."

Paula Trappe, of Latlurcan, Co Monaghan, says, "We can give people a personal service; offer them information about tourist places to see locally, suggest where they eat."

However B&B owners find that they are no longer catering only for tourists.

Orla O'Grady of Blackrock, Co Louth, for instance, has had her B&B full of builders for the last couple of months. But while people doing manual labour might well appreciate a robust breakfast, they're not on holidays and wouldn't necessarily be interested in either chatting at length to Irish people or finding out more about the scenic attractions of their surroundings. So what's the advantage to them of staying there, other than the simple fact that it's cheaper than the local hotel?

No one in the group likes getting into a conversation about pricing.

Maeve Walsh from Tubbercurry, Co Sligo, blames the increasing number of hotels offering low rates for the fall-off in B&B trade.

"It's the media's fault," she says. "And the Government. They should be backing the B&Bs, and not the hotels."

What about the reality of the free market, where, like it or not, hotels owners are just as entitled to try to get their own share of bed nights?

Walsh isn't having any of it. Her response is to say that she is convinced all the new hotels will fail, and to repeat her belief that the fault in loss of business lies elsewhere.

"The Irish themselves are running down B&Bs," Eilish McConnell of Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, remarks.

"I think it's disgusting the things they say. That we're old-fashioned. The media don't help either. Gerry Ryan is always making fun of us. But if you take the B&B away from Ireland, what do you have left? The B&B is unique; it's all about the home atmosphere, and staying with a family."

Dudley has been all over the country in the last few weeks, running the internet workshops which he has been involved in since they started as a pilot scheme in 2000.

One of the things he has noticed is that the age profile of those turning up is consistently of an older generation.

Very few young people are either coming into the business now, or taking it over from family members.

Several times during the day I'm asked if I stay in B&Bs myself. I answer honestly that the only times I've used them in the last few years is when I've been attending funerals in rural areas - when I have found people in B&Bs to have been very kind and considerate at what is a distressing time - but that when I'm working, I prefer to stay in a hotel, where I can plug in my computer, talk to nobody, and be anonymous. This does not go down well at all. Nobody is taking no for an answer.

"We could plug your computer in for you. We'd know you didn't want to talk to us if you told us you didn't want to talk to us," explains Pauline Daly. "We're as good as a hotel."

But if Irish B&Bs are not always the first choice of Irish holidaymakers, it's also the case that Irish tourists are not top of the list for the B&B owners either.

"I much prefer the continentals," says Pauline Daly of Mooretown, Co Meath, who has run a B&B for 20 years with her husband, Brian.

"They get up early and are tidy. You can't get the Irish out of bed in the mornings."