Yesterday we posted an article on how Dublin has dropped its hotel rates making it one of the cheapest holiday destinations in Europe. More figures released by travigo.co.uk have backed up this claim but also uncovered that overall European hotel prices have risen by 12%, with the majority of the price hikes coming from southern European holiday destinations.

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In the not so distant past, Dublin had a bit of a reputation for being one of the most expensive cities in the world. Now, it seems, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. While the price of products remains relatively high, it is the hotel and tourism industries that are leading the charge towards more competitive prices. Figures collected by Hotels.com show that hotel prices in the capital have dropped 23% in the past year, showing that hotels are more than willing to drop their rates to boost tourism as we near the end of the global downturn.

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Figures from the Central Statistics Office have shown that January experienced a record drop since last year in the number of people visiting Ireland. What makes this worse is that the figures for last year were recorded as being the lowest since 2005.
Niall Gibbons, the Tourism Ireland Chief Executive has blamed the drop in visits on the poor weather conditions.

Overseas visitors made 313,000 trips to Ireland in January, a fall of more than 110,000 or 26% from the same month last year. The CSO said this was the biggest percentage fall since it began recording these figures in 2000.

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It’s one thing to decide on whether or not to start a social media campaign. It’s a competely different kettle of fish deciding WHICH KIND of social media campaign to run. To try to get to the bottom of this, Psychster Inc. and Allrecipes teamed up to study the effectiveness of the different kinds of campaigns and whether or not the campaigns really make a difference.
Such information could be useful when deciding on the best angle of attack for your hotel’s social media assault.

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Irish owned airline Ryanair are planning on taking steps towards more engagement with thier customers but not through the usual method of using social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter. Ryanair are instead insisting they will not be engaging with their customers via these platforms but will instead make some rather dramatic changes to their website…

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Here’s something to put a smile on your face, especially if you’re an Irish hotel…

Travel publisher Lonely Planet have named 10 of the world’s friendliest countries. Ireland appeared in the list along side countries such as Fiji and Malawi which are famed for their friendly inhabitants. The list was derived from Lonely Planets 1000 Ultimate Experiences…

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Travelocity recently published a ‘Traveler Confidence Report’ which attempts to understand and predict the trends in travel intentions for 2010. The study shows a large rise in travel intentions compared to six months and one year ago.

These findings are sure to make many hoteliers breathe a sigh of relief.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed a very proud Apple Inc. showing off their brand new iPad. The iPad blurs the boundary between mobile phone and laptop and looks likely to become a handy travel companion.

Why should the hospitality industry care? Because it highlights the inevitability of the future of on-the-road hotel bookings.

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In recent times we’ve seen many forms of digital media adopting location as a variable. It has become a very effective way to direct marketing material at an audience according to their geographical location. Usually these are in the forms of custom banner ads, website content and more recently, twitter trends.
Now it’s the e-mail’s turn to have the geo-marketing makeover.
The MailChimp newsletter client has developed a system to automatically collect location data from users using their IP address, eliminating the need for the consumer to enter a location manually.
What this means is that Hotel marketers will be able to use this data to target or customise their newsletter campaigns at a specific location.

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