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Killarney Chamber of Commerce and Tourism has said that low off-season hotel occupancy is a challenge for its members but one that can be transformed into an opportunity if the right solutions are put in place.

Addressing members last night at the final phase of a consultation process for the Killarney Tourism Economic Impact Review (TEIR 1) report, which is being compiled by W2 Consulting, Chamber President Paul O’Neill said that one of the most surprising aspects of the initial findings was that Killarney trails the national and even regional average in terms of off-season occupancy.

Over 100 members attended the event in the Killarney Avenue Hotel, which finished with members giving their recommendations for growing the economy through tourism and industry generally in Kerry.

“We will be publishing full details of the report in the very near future but suffice to say that our event was a very positive engagement,” O’Neill said. “The key findings were relayed to members and this led to a very positive discussion around how we can take Kerry forward. We’ve not had a report like this done on Killarney before and that was very much evidenced by the energy in the room. With regard to the report itself, while we knew we had off-season challenges, we didn’t quite realise that occupancy rates compared in the way they do with national and regional averages.

“Now that we know where we are, there’s nothing for us to do but treat this an opportunity. Clearly the status quo isn’t working and we’ve already set about addressing it with innovative ways of bringing people in. These include festivals such as the Christmas Festival just gone and the recently announced Killarney Mountain Festival, which takes place on 9th, 10th and 11th of March.

“But there’s also an opportunity here for us to challenge central government and various agencies involved in tourism and industrial promotion to look again at Killarney and match our determination to ensure that the economy of this town and county grows in the shoulder periods of the year.”

Conor Hennigan, Development Manager with the Killarney Chamber, said that there are many assuring aspects from the findings, not least that the report had confirmed tourists’ satisfaction rating with the Killarney experience.

“Ultimately, the research conducted for this report, including interviews with tourists, delivered huge approval ratings in terms of visitor satisfaction levels,” he said. “So we clearly have the product, the service and the capacity. The issues we have are effectively seasonality and regionality and our meeting tonight was about getting the opinion of our members as to what the solutions may be. We got some very interesting insights and they will now become part of the report.”