Our bed and breakfasts helped put us on the map as a destination, but they have lost out to hotels in recent years. Sandra O'Connellhears from guest-house owners who say they still offer a service that hoteliers can only dream of.
IF THERE'S ONE thing worse than being kept awake half the night by an illuminated Sacred Heart, it is being woken by the sound of your BB landlord gurning on the loo next door. It was 15 years ago, and, needless to say, we skipped breakfast.
More than that, as a couple we have skipped BBs ever since. Like most of the country, we discovered cheap hotels. Then we discovered cheap flights and even cheaper destinations. We never looked back, and we were not alone.
"The domestic market has collapsed," admits Kate Burns, the chairwoman of the Town Country Homes Association, a marketing group for BB owners. "They remind us of a time when we had no money, and Irish people preferred to opt for the anonymity of hotels."
Thirty years ago up to 60 per cent of BB business came from the Irish market. Today that figure has fallen to 20 per cent.
On the other hand, the BB experience is precisely what overseas visitors come to Ireland for.
"They love the Irish home-stay experience," says Burns. "And, if you look outside of Dublin or Shannon, the majority of North American and European visitors to Ireland choose BBs."
Spurred on by movies such as The Quiet Man, by a desire to reconnect with their roots and by increasingly affordable transatlantic airfares, Americans in particular are credited with spawning the first crop of Irish BBs, in the 1950s.
The natives soon joined in, according to Edmond Hickey of Family Homes of Ireland, the country's second-biggest BB marketing group.
"It all really began in the 1960s, when people finally, after the war years, had money to travel and started to travel around Ireland. The standard of country hotels was abysmal, and so BBs sprang up to service the market," he says.
As our travel experiences increased, however, and budget two- and three-star hotels proliferated, BBs began to lose their cachet. They were also hit by the domestic and international trend towards short urban breaks and away from longer rural holidays. Snobbery has played a part in their decline, as well.
"The BB was always associated with cheap and cheerful. After a while the BB became the place you stayed if you couldn't get into the hotel for the wedding. People didn't like to say they stayed in a BB, for fear it looked like that was all they could afford," says Hickey.
Little wonder, then, that the number of BBs around the country is falling by about 10 per cent a year, as older owners retire and aren't replaced. Fáilte Ireland-registered BBs are diminishing at a rate of about 200 a year, from nearly 4,000 in 1996 to 2,600 today. And where in 1999 there were an estimated eight million overnight stays in Irish BBs, by 2007 this had dropped by a quarter, to six million.
For some, the number of unregistered and, by implication, substandard BBs operating does the sector no favours.
As Kate Burns put it, speaking at the launch of her association's bid to introduce mandatory licensing of BBs, "having 5,000-odd unapproved BBs operating without any health-and-safety standards undermines over 2,600 registered BBs who pay to be inspected".
Edmond Hickey is less sure, believing the market will weed out bad operators. "There are very few really bad BBs out there any more, simply because you'd have to be a fool to run one," he says.
In whatever form they assume, BBs will remain an integral part of Irish tourism, he believes. "There will always be the Irish BB, whether it is regulated, licensed or classified."
In the future, the greatest demand may well come from customers disenchanted with the very hotels that first drew them away.
"Cheap hotels have become an appalling experience," says Hickey. "You are more than likely to be met by someone at reception [who] won't be able to tell you the best places to go, and they'll have been built by builders who throw them up the way they buy Aston Martins - just to have them - installing their daughter to run it. They're useless hoteliers. "
By contrast, people regularly write to him about BB owners who stayed up all night in hospitals with guests, or drove them 100km to airports when cars broke down. "Try that in a hotel," he says.
If it is to capitalise on this nascent opportunity, however, the BB sector will have to market itself better at home and abroad, and individual owners may also have to revisit their offering.
Outside of honeypot areas such as Galway, Kerry and Dublin, where demand is greatest, the BBs that survive will be those that succeed in finding specialised niches.
"Take walkers, for example," says Ethna Murphy of Fáilte Ireland. "Walking tourism has enormous potential, so what we want from BBs is for them to really get into that market, tell people they will provide packed lunches, that they have facilities to dry clothes, can put people in touch with local guides."
The sector needs to let people know just how much it offers.
"The BB is the only place left now where you will get a breakfast served up to you," says Murphy. "And not just a cooked breakfast but locally sourced foods, home-made breads and preserves. It's all there, but the BBs aren't telling people about it."
BB rates average about €35-€40 per person sharing, which is pretty similar to the per-room rates of low-cost hotels. What BBs shouldn't do is compete on price, she says.
"When you've only three rooms to sell you simply can't compete on price," says Murphy. "So what they really need to do is communicate the value of what they do over and above the core offering of a bed and a breakfast. The fact that they are so well dispersed, in gems of places around the country, places that have neither permission nor volumes for hotels, should be emphasised."
So, after decades of decline, could the sector be poised on the brink of a renaissance?
"We are not in decline [so] much as in a period of transition," says Kate Burns. "There were too many BBs in the past. There are still too many unregistered ones. So the closure of BBs isn't necessarily a bad thing."
Higher standards will, she believes, ultimately lead to greater demand all round - even, perhaps, from the natives.
"We would like to win back the domestic market," says Burns. "I'd encourage all those who have had negative experiences with BBs in the past, with squiggly carpets and nylon sheets, to try them out again. You'll be amazed at how high the standards are."
'In those days it was all Americans, and we got £1 for the night and £1 for the tip. We didn't need to market, either'
OLD-SCHOOL BB owner Margaret McLoughlin-O'Connell has been welcoming guests for 30 years. Her earnings from Loyola, her guest house, put her sons through university, in the bad old days before the end of fees.
"The marriage bar was still in place. I had three sons I was ambitious for, and a working man's wage wasn't enough, so I had to subvent my husband's income," she says.
As it happened, she earned more than money. "I have loved every second of it, and still do," says McLoughlin-O'Connell. "There's a great sense of satisfaction and fulfilment in running a BB, and it has enabled me to travel the world at my own dining-room table."
She gets a mix of guests, from overseas holidaymakers to Irish people with appointments at the nearby Mater Misericordiae University Hospital. She has four double rooms in her Victorian house, priced at €35 per person sharing, or €40 for an en suite.
At this stage it's a labour of love. "Running the BB has kept loneliness at bay. My husband and I have been on our own for the last 15 years. We'd be rattling around on our own without it," she says.
Patricia Faherty is one of the newer breed of career BB operators. Having lived in the US for 10 years, she returned to Ireland to set up Seawinds, a purpose-built BB in her home town of Killybegs, Co Donegal, a decade ago. Rates are from €28 to €35 per person sharing. Faherty is proactive about building business; this winter she is launching painting weekends.
"I want to develop us as a specialist BB, providing information packs on walking, angling and heritage and culture. We're also linking up with a local archaeologist to run tours. It's all about giving people another reason to come," says Faherty.
Bernadette Freyne is based 10km outside Cork city in rural Ballinhassig, where she and her husband train event horses. Her mother was one of the first crop of BB owners, in Blarney. "In those days it was all Americans, and we got £1 for the night and £1 for the tip. We didn't need to market, either: it all came to our doorstep."
The average stay at Ardfield, her BB is three nights; her weekly deals, for €450 per couple, are also popular.
"There is definitely a market out there craving the home experience we offer," says Freyne. "After all, you can get a bed anywhere; it's the people you remember when you travel."
• Loyola is at 18 Charleville Road, Phibsborough, Dublin 7, 01-8389973, www.loyola18.com
• Seawinds is at the Diamond, Killybeds, Co Donegal, 074- 9732003, www.seawindsireland.com
• Ardfield is at Goggins Hill, Ballinhassig, Co Cork, 021-4885723, www.corkairportbandb.com