"We're turning away fewer people this summer," John Doyle of the eponymous seafood bar in Dingle said drily. July 29th was the "quietest night of the year", according to the owner of Darcy's restaurant in Kenmare. That is not how things should be at the height of the tourist season.
Brian Cullen, who runs Derg Cruisers on the Shannon, will go to Germany soon to see what can be salvaged from a 30 to 35 per cent fall in his principal market. Eamon McKeon, chief executive of Great Southern Hotels, said his German business is down by 15 to 20 per cent.
Tricia Kealy of Kealy's seafood bar in Greencastle, Co Donegal, finds business is down on last year. Last month, she said, they lost customers from Belfast who did not leave their properties during the marching season, unsure of what they might return to if they did.
Pat Dooley, marketing director of the country's biggest car hire firm, Dooleys Rent-a-Car, never spent so much money in Germany as this year but has nothing to show for it.
"Anyone who said tourism is not down this year needs his head examined," said Michael Fitzgibbon, owner of Larkin's restaurant in Tralee.
Dermot McEvilly of the Cashel House Hotel in Connemara said the season is looking "very dodgy".
The snapshots are random but the picture is consistent: 1997 will not meet the official tourism targets of a 7 per cent increase in numbers and a 9 per cent increase in revenue.
Up to March the deutschmark lost 19 per cent in value against the pound over two years. In the same period, the French franc lost 14 per cent. Put another way, the cost of hiring a cruiser on the Shannon will cost a family from Dusseldorf almost 20 per cent more than it did two years ago.
Brian Cullen of Derg Cruisers points to another factor. German tour operators have been trying to keep prices to their customers down by running cheap, night-time charters. The effect, said Mr Cullen, has been to bring the Shannon cruising market a bit more down-market in Germany. "I don't want to sound snobbish, but it is clear our German customers have less money to spend than they used to."
Then, too, he said, there is the condition of the German economy. "They have 4.5 million unemployed in a country that used not to know what unemployment was."
Tony Boland, chairman of the Kinsale Chamber of Tourism, said the town's German and Dutch business is down this year. One Dutch operator, he added, had to increase prices by 15 per cent in the middle of his prime selling season, not because the Irish were charging more but to adjust for currency fluctuations.
Dermot McEvilly said the US market is being hit by the fact that the dollar is strong against sterling. Americans planning a European holiday consult only the sterling/dollar exchange rate and do not realise that the dollar has been strong against the Irish currency. Between 25 and 30 per cent of Americans who visit Ireland "back-track" from Britain. This year they are avoiding Britain because of strong sterling and Ireland is caught in an unintended currency crossfire.
Noel O'Callaghan, the Dublin-based hotelier who owns the Mont Clare, the Davenport and the new Alexandra, said the airlines and car ferries are carrying record numbers this year, but they are low spenders.
A spokeswoman for Bord Failte said it was not altering the targets set for tourism growth in 1997.