The accommodation website Hotels. com, one of the biggest resellers in the Irish market, said prices of rooms booked via its site rose 10 per cent in the first half of the year, confirming that a recovery is well underway in the sector.
The Irish Hotels' Federation (IHF), however, has queried whether the site's figures are applicable across the industry, pointing to Central Statistics Office data which indicates that prices nationally are rising by just 3.5 per cent.
“Less than one out of every 10 room nights booked in Ireland is sold through this booking site,” said the IHF president Stephen McNally. “Hotels.com does not typically capture other categories of booking such as the key tour, conference and event market segments” which are usually sold to customers directly by the hotel, he added.
Lizann Peppard, a spokeswoman for the website, rejected the IHF's criticism of its Hotel Price Index (HPI) .
“Hotels.com 100 per cent stands by its data and the robustness of its figures. The HPI is based on bookings made on the Hotels.com site, and prices shown are those actually paid by customers per room per night rather than advertised rates,” she said.
The website’s figures suggest the average price per night of an Irish hotel booked through its site is €101. In Dublin, the index suggests, prices over the first six months jumped 15 per cent to €107.
Mirroring the results of other surveys, Hotels.com says the most expensive place in Ireland in which to book a hotel is Killarney in Kerry, where prices rose by 4 per cent to an average of €107 per night.
The website, which is one of the biggest players in its sector globally with 325,000 properties on its database, would likely have a bias towards foreign tourists as opposed to domestic guests.
Killarney is particularly popular with US tourists, who tend to book luxury rooms on popular sites like Hotels.com, rather than booking directly with hotels.
Prices in Limerick surged by 12 per cent, according to the HPI, but it retained its crown as the country’s cheapest destination to book a hotel, with an average rate of €74.
Belfast hotel rooms booked through the site rose by 16 per cent to an average of €98, the highest gain recorded in the HPI, although some of this increase would be attributable to the recent strengthening of sterling against the euro.
“Following on from a strong 2013 thanks to the Gathering initiative which boosted visitor numbers to the country, the latest HPI shows really promising signs of recovery for the year ahead,” said Ms Peppard.
CSO data shows that visitor numbers to Ireland between January and May rose by 9 per cent, with the key British market rising by 13 per cent.
The hotel sector was one of the worst hit during the crash, after a decade-long hotel building boom fuelled by tax breaks. It has since rebounded strongly, however, with foreign capital from players such as Blackstone and Brehon Capital used to snap up properties around the country.
