Kilkenny needs more hotel rooms

A Fáilte Ireland report has highlighted a severe lack of accommodation for tourists in Kilkenny.
The report shows that Kilkenny’s hotel development plans are not sufficiently equipped to meet growing tourism demand. It also flags Kilkenny’s shortage of tourist accommodation in comparison to other Irish tourist destinations.
While Kilkenny currently has 3,127 available bed spaces for tourists, both Galway and Cork have almost three times this number on offer. Galway has 8,966 bed spaces dedicated to tourist accommodation, and Cork has 8,801 bed spaces.
The study quantified the accommodation offered to tourists by the three counties under a number of categories.
Available beds were counted across hotels, guest houses, B&Bs, self-catering accommodation, caravan/ camping sites, and youth/ holiday hostels.
Fáilte pointed to the recent growth in tourism demand at a national level, which saw a 7% increase in tourists to Ireland during 2018. With such figures, the organisation have predicted a strong growth trajectory for the future. It is expected that tourist numbers will be up more than 20% over the next five years, which “will put pressure on current accommodation stock levels”, according to Fáilte’s findings.
Kilkenny’s tourism sector will face excessive demand if such growth does occur, as there is just one hotel development project planned, with an extension of Pembroke Hotel granted permission.
By comparison, Galway has 14 ongoing hotel accommodation projects, while Cork also has 14 projects. These projects are all at various stages, with some only in the planning system, while most have had planning granted, and a few are already in construction.
If all these projects come to fruition, over the next 5 years there is guaranteed to be a huge rise in the number of hotel bedrooms in Cork and Galway. Cork is set to develop an additional 934 bedrooms in this timeframe, while Galway is planning for 490 more bedrooms.
Kilkenny, however, have only planned to build an additional 41 bedrooms by 2022.
This means that within the next four years, Cork will achieve 35% growth in tourist accommodation, and Galway will have 17% growth, meanwhile Kilkenny is only set to secure a 4% increase in available bed spaces for incoming tourists.
While Kilkenny tourism is “growing year on year”, it still has a long way to go in competing with the big cities.
In 2017, Cork attracted 2,718 tourists, while 2,697 tourists visited Galway. In the same year, Kilkenny welcomed only 613 tourists. 315 of Kilkenny’s tourists were from overseas, while the remaining 298 were domestic tourists.
The report acknowledged that there has been “considerable investment” in Kilkenny hotels in the last year, but argues that almost all of this has been poured into food and beverage facilities or in refurbishing existing bedroom stock.
The report indicates that more can be done for tourist accommodation in Kilkenny, claiming that “There are significant opportunities in Kilkenny for additional bed capacity to accommodate future growth”.