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International Hotel Branding

Introduction:

Irish Hotel Market

The number of hotel rooms in Ireland has increased by more than 70 per cent to 50,000 over the last decade. Last year, hotel room capacity grew by 6 per cent, according to figures published by Failte Ireland.

The Hotel industry in Ireland has become extremely competitive. Faced with competition from new hotels, some established players have decided to leave the market. The government sold off the Great Southern Hotel chain, while another well-known hotel chain, the Gresham group, was sold in January 2004 for €115 million.

The hotel model is changing. It is all about the number of rooms you have now. Fortunately, a lot of smaller, family-owned hotels have been able to sell off their hotels as property assets.

The Ramada Hotel Group and Crawford Investments announced a €300 million investment in 37 hotels in Ireland over a three-year period. The hotels will be a mixture of new developments and existing establishments.
Golden Tulip UK, a British hotel group that has already entered the Irish market, expects to have 15 hotels in Ireland.

The industry is set to acquire more than 50 new hotels and a potential 9,500 new guestrooms before 2008. This growth in hotel development is primarily developer-driven, stimulated by government tax incentives, with global hotel operators likely to play a key role in operating the vast majority of these new hotels operating within Ireland. It is evident that both the fiscal incentives and internationalisation of the Irish hotel product represents the most important developments in the changing structure of the modern Irish hotel industry and subsequent valuation of hotels.

The number of hotels in Ireland has increased by almost 20 per cent over a ten year period, with the room stock increasing significantly by almost 75 per cent. While a review of the Ireland and Northern Ireland, Hotel Industry Surveys, 1996 – 2006, shows that there has been a steady increase in national room...