Troubled tourism season ahead - Cllr Peter Flynn

'VERY CONCERNING' Mags Downey Martin, Ballina Chamber.

Councillor sounds warning bell on Mayo hotels’ bed shortage

Oisín McGovern

A WESTPORT county councillor has predicted ‘a really bad year’ ahead for Mayo due to the amount of tourist accommodation being used by the Government.
Speaking yesterday (Monday) at the monthly meeting of Mayo County Council’s Tourism SPC, Cllr Flynn said that 26 percent of all hotel beds in the county are currently being used by the Government for refugees and asylum seekers.
Cllr Flynn called for Mayo County Council Chief Executive Kevin Kelly to attend the next meeting of the SPC to address how the county would deal with this ‘massive shortage of accommodation’. He also said the county had become ‘stale’ due to the failure to develop new and existing tourist attractions.
Currently, approximately 3,000 hotel, guesthouse and B&Bs beds are being used to accommodate refugees in Mayo. In total, Mayo has 47 hotels, with 2,377 bedrooms and 6,227 bed spaces.
Only county Clare has a greater proportion of hotel beds being used by the government, with 37 percent of its beds not being used for tourism.
‘Sleepwalking’
Mayo is currently the only county with an Average Daily Rate (ADR) lower than it was in 2021 – the figure used to indicate the average revenue earned for an occupied room on a given day.
Cllr Flynn said keeping tourist beds out of circulation would have ‘a serious impact’ on football for small businesses.
“I hate to say this, but I think we’re actually sleep-walking into a really, really bad year for Mayo in 2023,” he stated.
“I really think we’re in a major problem, but I think we’re going to get into a bigger problem if we don’t react sooner rather than later.
We simply cannot ignore it any longer.”
The Fine Gael councillor also hit out at people in the property business who are ‘lobbying’ to bring refugees into the country.
“We talk about vulture funds, but we have our own vultures within our own county who are making a lot of money out of this on the back of misfortunate people. But it’s going to have a very serious impact on a lot of other people,” Cllr Flynn stated.
Tourism SCP Cathaoirleach Cllr Michael Kilcoyne said some tourist operators have said they simply have no accommodation available, while others have raised their prices because of the shortage.
Mags Downey Martin, CEO of Ballina Chamber of Commerce, told the meeting that Ballina 2023 organisers were ‘really struggling’ to source accommodation for the expected influx of visitors. She described the shortage as ‘very concerning’.