Westport tourism drop could close businesses

BUSINESS owners in Westport are fearing that a repeat of the 2023 tourist season will lead to ‘a raft’ of business closures in the town.

Local business people who depend on highly on tourism have outlined concerns to The Mayo News regarding a drop in footfall.

This has led to calls for a drop in the VAT rate for hospitality from 13.5 percent to 9 percent amid fears that Westport is becoming ‘unaffordable’.

Hundreds of tourism beds in the locality have been taken out of circulation since 2022 to accommodate refugees from Ukraine.

Figures released before Christmas revealed that visitor numbers at popular local attractions such as Croagh Patrick and the Great Western Greenway had almost halved since 2019, prompting concern from local representatives.

Hugh Boyle, owner of Christy’s Harvest café, said local businesspeople were ‘very concerned’ about a repeat of the 2023 tourist season – which was beset by heavy rainfall, with one local business person describing it as ‘a washout’.

“I think you’ll see quite a few places closed in Westport in 2024,” Mr Boyle told The Mayo News during an interview outside his Shop Street premises.

‘Very expensive’

“TOURISM has dropped off. Westport has gone very, very expensive, moreso for accommodation. We are finding it very very hard to get full-time staff because the hospitality industry is probably not the best paying job in the world and what they make, they cannot afford accommodation in Westport.”

Another businessperson, who did not wish to be named, warned that Westport would see ‘a raft’ of business closures due to a decline in tourist footfall.

“We are fearing that it will be a repeat of last summer. And if that's the case, businesses are in big trouble. We’ve had to get loans to get through last year,” they said.

“We bank on the summers in Westport being good so we can pay off our bills and keep our money for the winter but if it’s like a repeat of last year there will be an absolute raft of businesses closing throughout Westport in the hospitality industry.

“It won’t be one or two. It’ll be in the double digits and I can assure you of that because I know people in the game and I talk to people all the time. That’ll create unemployment and it will have knock-on effects for other things as well. It’s the perfect storm.”

Some local businesspeople have estimated that tourism footfall has declined by between 20 and 25 percent since 2019.

Frank Chambers, manager of John O’Briens on Shop Street, said the decline in foreign visitor numbers had been ‘very noticeable’.

“From 2022 until now it hasn’t been great,” Mr Chambers told The Mayo News.

“You can’t get accommodation. Everybody’s shop is in the same line. Some people are wondering when the season is going to start,” he added.

“We have no bus spaces either for people to park their buses and let tourists off, so the tourists are flying through the town.”

Multiple charges

Mr Boyle said that many small businesses are continuing to struggle with the ongoing cost of energy, VAT and commercial rates.

Echoing calls from other local businesspeople, Mr Boyle said reducing the VAT on hospitality from 13.5 percent to 9 percent would be a ‘huge help’.

“Forget about shoving the rates up next year – mine by 300 percent – and then the rates money will not even be spent in Westport – it’s now a tax. It was a service. We got the bins taken away, we got the water, we got everything, now it’s a complete tax. We don’t get any of it,” he said.

“The majority of our rates money we’re paying now is in the municipality, it’s not in Westport.”

Dermot Langan, President of the Westport Chamber of Commerce, told The Mayo News that the challenges facing local hospitality businesses was to be discussed at their January meeting yesterday (Tuesday). The Chamber of Commerce are due to issue a statement on the matter.

Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk last week, local Fine Gael county councillor Peter Flynn said that the amount of tourist accommodation being used to accommodate refugees was having ‘a detrimental impact’ on Mayo’s economy.

At least 21 percent of Fáilte Ireland-registered accommodation in Mayo has been taken out of circulation by the government.

However, it has been estimated that up to 35 percent of tourist accommodation in Mayo may be out of circulation when non-registered accommodation is taken into account.

Cllr Flynn claimed on social media that ‘profit driven faceless opportunists’ were using accommodation for refugees ‘without any consideration of the capacity of communities to accommodate them or of the potential displacement of employment and economic activity as a result’.

Mayo county councillors recently passed a unanimous motion calling on council officials to cease cooperation with the Department of Integration ‘until such time as an agreed strategy is put in place to properly coordinate the provision of additional services for the communities’ hosting refugees and international protection applicants’.