How the Irish Hospitality Industry Lost the Plot (and Its Customers)

I’m standing at a hotel reception desk in Ireland, blinking at a room rate that looks more like a monthly mortgage payment than a nightly stay. €275. For a business hotel. On the outskirts of Dublin. Pre-Covid, this same bed, TV, and suspiciously decorative cushion would’ve set you back a perfectly reasonable €80. Back then, you could stay the night, grab a fry in the morning, and still have change for a pint. Now? You’re expected to hand over a kidney and say thank you.

Something has gone badly wrong.

Across the Irish Sea, even the UK is starting to flinch. Rachel Reeves, staring down the barrel of pub closures and hotel bankruptcies, is reportedly lining up yet another political U-turn to shield hospitality from rising costs. When governments start backtracking at speed, you know the industry is in trouble. Yet in Ireland, hotel prices continue to soar like a runaway Ryanair flight—minus the cheap seats.

And this is after the Irish government already threw the kitchen sink at the sector. Taxes cut. Hospitality VAT reduced. Tourist promotion funds established to lure visitors back with glossy videos of cliffs, pints, and smiling locals. The message was clear: support local, keep the doors open, get people travelling again.

Instead, what we got was daylight robbery with turn-down service.

The uncomfortable truth—one everyone mutters about but rarely confronts—is that a huge chunk of Ireland’s hotel stock has quietly morphed into emergency accommodation. Hotels are being paid serious, guaranteed money to house Ukrainians and other nationalities. This isn’t a moral argument—it’s a market reality. When a hotel can lock in long-term, state-backed income, tourists and domestic travellers suddenly become an inconvenience rather than the customer.

The knock-on effect is brutal. Fewer rooms available means prices skyrocket. It’s Economics 101: squeeze supply, demand goes feral. A weekend away becomes a luxury purchase. A business trip needs board-level approval. Weddings, funerals, family events—anything requiring an overnight stay—turn into logistical nightmares.

And it doesn’t stop at the room key.

Once you’ve remortgaged the house to sleep there, you’re hit again at the bar. Pints creeping north of sanity. Food prices that make you wonder if the chef personally foraged the ingredients at dawn. Steak becomes a special occasion. Chips feel like a splurge. Hospitality, once Ireland’s great social glue, now feels like an endurance test for your bank balance.

So is it any wonder people are voting with their feet?

Why spend €350 on a night and dinner in Ireland when you can fly to Spain, Italy, or Portugal, stay for less, eat better, drink cheaper, and come home with a tan instead of buyer’s remorse? People aren’t being disloyal to local businesses—they’re being financially literate.

This isn’t a hit piece on hoteliers trying to survive in a mad world. Rising energy costs, wages, insurance—it’s all real. But when prices double and the customer disappears, the model collapses. You can’t promote tourism while quietly removing the beds.

Ireland risks turning its hospitality industry into a hollow shell: glossy marketing on the outside, empty wallets on the inside. If the goal is to keep money local, support pubs, restaurants, and hotels, then something has to give—because right now, the only thing giving way is the patience of the people expected to pay for it all.

And they’ve started booking flights.