The hospitality industry is beginning to rip off the customer once more as it did during the Celtic Tiger years, according to the Labour Party spokesperson on Urban Regeneration.
Joe Costello's comments come in the wake of a report by data and analytics provider, STR, which revealed that Dublin hotel rooms cost 19% per cent more in July compared to the same month last year.
The report showed that the average daily rate for hotel rooms in July saw an increase of 19.3%, up to €141.32, and that the Revenue per Available Room (Revpar) jumped by 18.9 per cent to €125.43. The occupancy rate for Dublin hotel rooms in July was high by international standards at 90.2 per cent, compared to 88.4 per cent in London.
Reacting to the news, as reported by dublinlive.ie, Costello commented: "Last year the price of a double room in a Dublin hotel increased by 28% in the 12-month period from August 2014 to August 2015.
"This year, data analytics specialist STR has determined that the average daily rate of a hotel room in Dublin has increased by 19.3% between July 2015 and July 2016.
"This is close to a whopping 50% increase in two years. Clearly the industry is hell-bent on killing the golden goose."
Labour has called for an increase to the VAT rate paid by the hospitality sector if hotel room prices are not reduced.
Meanwhile, another study published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in April, showed that Dublin hotels had the highest Revpar growth rate for 2015 at 25.3 per cent and that by 2017 it is expected to be number one in Revpar growth among European "gateway" cities.
According to the PwC, the main reason for the growth in Revpar has been due to an increase in room rates, which rose by 17.5 per cent to an average rate of €111 for the last year. Although the number of hotel rooms has remained at a constant number of about 18,900 over the past few years, industry members expect demand to still remain high.
The Findlater House office block on O'Connell Street, which was bought in 2013 for €6.2 million by London's Seraphine Hotel Group, is expected to open later this year, reports the Irish Times, however there are still around a dozen hotel proposals for Dublin waiting to be finalised.
