Car rental, ferry and airline companies have seen a drop in business of up to 40 per cent due to the foot-and-mouth crisis, according to the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation.
Car rental companies' bookings have dropped between 30 and 40 per cent. During the first three weeks of the alert, three companies lost approximately £300,000. The confederation has given a summary of these losses to the joint Oireachtas committee on tourism.
The car rental sector is seeking reduced concession fees from Aer Rianta and temporary relief under the Vehicle Registration Tax scheme.
Irish Ferries has seen its market decline by 29 per cent over the past two weeks and bookings for the short term are well below last year's. Aer Lingus has predicted a drop of 20 per cent in traffic for April and an overall drop of 15 per cent from April to June.
Traffic from continental Europe has shown a "dramatic disimprovement" according to the confederation's submission, and looks like recording a 20 per cent drop between January and March. Meanwhile, the coach tourism sector has lost £4.4 million since the alert began. Operators are having difficulty meeting monthly repayments and have sought a full rebate on excise duty.
A group of five Irish hoteliers, which has come together to counter the crisis, appealed yesterday to people's patriotism by asking them to holiday at home this year. The group plans to market its hotels collectively as "Select Hotels of Ireland". In a statement, it said the hotel industry had suffered severely in recent weeks. Bookings were down across the country by up to 40 per cent and the outlook for the year was grim.
Hotels in the group are the Forster Court Hotel, Galway; Stillorgan Park Hotel, Dublin; Talbot Hotel, Conference & Leisure Centre, Wexford; Shannon Oaks Hotel & Country Club, Portumna; and Kilkenny River Court Hotel, Kilkenny.
The general manager of the Forster Court Hotel, Mr Jonathan Murphy, said: "The hotel industry has to aggressively market itself out of this crisis with value-for-money packages for both the corporate and leisure sectors."