Last updated: September 2026. Human written and fact checked against each named source.
Ireland’s hospitality sector enters the autumn of 2026 with more overseas visitors than a year ago, a permanent cut in VAT on food, and a pipeline of new hotel beds concentrated in Dublin, but also with rising wage costs and a steady run of restaurant closures. This page collects the current figures on hotels, restaurants, cafés and pubs in Ireland: how many visitors are coming and where they stay, how many businesses and jobs the sector supports, what is happening to prices and investment, and how much building and refurbishment work is being permitted. Every number links to the CSO, Fáilte Ireland, Department of Finance or GeoDirectory release it came from.
Key Hospitality Statistics for Ireland at a Glance
- 4.71 million overseas visitors made overnight trips to Ireland between January and August 2026, up 10.8% on the same months of 2025 (calculated). Source: CSO Inbound Tourism, table ITM05
- Hotels accounted for 27.9% of the 34.7 million nights overseas visitors spent in Ireland in the first eight months of 2026, and 39.3% of overseas trips in August involved a hotel stay (calculated). Source: CSO table ITM05
- 188,500 people worked in accommodation and food services in the second quarter of 2026, up 4.1% in a year and 6.6% of everyone in employment (calculated). Source: CSO Labour Force Survey, table QES03
- Ireland had 20,941 accommodation and food service enterprises in 2023: 4,361 in accommodation and 16,580 in food and beverage service. Source: CSO Business Demography, table BRA31
- The VAT rate on food and catering, including food served in hotels, fell permanently from 13.5% to 9% on 1 July 2026; hotel accommodation stays at 13.5%. Source: Department of Finance, 30 June 2026
- Hotel investment reached just over €1.6 billion in 2025, of which the Dalata Hotel Group sale accounted for €1.17 billion. Source: Fáilte Ireland, Irish hotel investment in 2025
- About 12,750 tourist accommodation bed places were under construction at the end of the third quarter of 2025, around 71% of them in Dublin. Source: Fáilte Ireland, February 2026
- 547 planning permissions were granted for hotels, restaurants and cafés in the year to the second quarter of 2026, and 58.7% of them were for alterations, conversions and renovations (calculated). Source: CSO Planning Permissions for Non Residential Buildings, table BHQ07
- Prices in restaurants and accommodation services rose 3.4% in the year to August 2026, below overall inflation of 3.7%, while hotel prices rose 1.6%. Source: CSO Consumer Price Index, table CPM24
- 22,042 commercial units were occupied by accommodation and food businesses in the second quarter of 2026, 439 fewer than a year earlier. Source: GeoDirectory Commercial Vacancy Rates Report, Q2 2026
How Many Visitors Are Coming and Where They Stay
The CSO’s inbound tourism series records 4.71 million overnight trips to Ireland by overseas visitors between January and August 2026, against 4.25 million in the same months of 2025, an increase of 10.8% (calculated from CSO table ITM05). August alone brought 788,700 overseas trips.
Those visitors spent 34.7 million nights in the country over the eight months, and 9.7 million of those nights, or 27.9%, were in hotels and conference centres. Hotels matter more for trips than for nights, because hotel stays tend to be shorter than stays with friends, relatives or in rented houses: in August 2026, 39.3% of overseas overnight trips involved a hotel (same source; share of nights calculated). Staying with friends, relatives or in their own property accounted for 42.3% of nights, rented and self-catering houses for 9.2% and guest houses and B&Bs for 4.7% (calculated from the same table).
The source markets have shifted. Bank of Ireland’s hospitality team reported that visitors from the United States and Canada accounted for 28% of all overnight stays in 2025, three points higher than a year earlier, while domestic trips within Ireland fell by 6% in the year to September 2025 (Bank of Ireland Hospitality Outlook 2026, via ThinkBusiness, cited as secondary).
The Seasonal Pattern
Hospitality demand follows a steep annual curve. In 2025, overseas trips ranged from 304,300 in February to 772,800 in August, so the peak month brought 2.5 times as many visitors as the quietest (calculated from CSO table ITM05). Hotel guests also stay for shorter periods than other visitors: overseas visitors staying in a hotel in August 2026 stayed an average of 5.6 nights, against 8.3 nights for all overseas visitors and 10.2 nights for those staying with friends or relatives (same source). For owners, the months from November to February are the natural window for refurbishment and redecoration, when rooms and dining rooms are easiest to take out of service.
How Big the Sector Is: Businesses and Jobs
Accommodation and food service activities employed 188,500 people in the second quarter of 2026, up from 181,000 a year earlier, an increase of 4.1%. That is 6.6% of the 2.84 million people at work in the State (CSO table QES03; changes and share calculated).
The business base is overwhelmingly small. CSO business demography counts 20,941 active accommodation and food service enterprises in 2023, engaging 243,192 people: 4,361 accommodation businesses engaging 78,686 people and 16,580 food and beverage businesses, such as restaurants, cafés and pubs, engaging 164,506 (CSO table BRA31). The Department of Finance notes that over 99% of businesses in the food and catering sectors are SMEs, and over half are micro-enterprises with fewer than ten employees (Department of Finance, June 2026).
On the ground, GeoDirectory counted 22,042 commercial units occupied by accommodation and food businesses in the second quarter of 2026, 439 fewer than a year earlier. Coastal and tourism counties rely on the sector most: 23.7% of occupied commercial units in Kerry are in accommodation and food, 20.3% in Clare and 18.9% in Donegal, against 8.2% in Monaghan (GeoDirectory, Q2 2026).
The 9% VAT Rate
The single biggest policy change for restaurants and cafés this year took effect on 1 July 2026, when the VAT rate on food and catering services and on hairdressing fell from 13.5% to 9%. Unlike earlier temporary cuts, the new rate has no sunset clause. It applies to food and catering provided by hotels but not to hotel accommodation itself, which remains at 13.5%. The Department of Finance expects the measure to support over 150,000 jobs, with about 85% of the benefit going to SMEs (Department of Finance, 30 June 2026).
The cut arrives against rising costs. The national minimum wage rose to €14.15 an hour from January 2026, and employers are also taking on pension auto-enrolment contributions and higher PRSI (Bank of Ireland via ThinkBusiness). Fáilte Ireland recorded 129 hospitality insolvencies in 2025, down 12% on 2024, with restaurants and cafés accounting for the majority (Fáilte Ireland, February 2026).
Hospitality Prices
Prices in restaurants and accommodation services rose 3.4% in the year to August 2026, slightly below overall consumer inflation of 3.7%. Within that, the figures for August 2026 were (CSO Consumer Price Index, table CPM24):
| Consumer price item | Change in year to August 2026 |
|---|---|
| All items (overall inflation) | +3.7% |
| Restaurants and accommodation services | +3.4% |
| Restaurants, cafés and the like | +3.5% |
| Bars and pubs | +3.7% |
| Canteens and cafeterias | +6.0% |
| Hotels, motels and similar accommodation | +1.6% |
The CSO measures what customers pay, so these August figures already reflect two months of the lower VAT rate on food. Hotel room prices, which kept the 13.5% rate, rose least of all the hospitality lines.
Hotel Investment and the Room Pipeline
Fáilte Ireland’s review of 2025 put total hotel investment at just over €1.6 billion. The sale of the Dalata Hotel Group accounted for €1.17 billion of that; excluding it, transactions totalled €457 million, close to 2021 and 2022 levels. Dublin assets continued to command higher prices, with the highest price per room of about €385,000 recorded at the Fleet Hotel in Dublin against a regional high of €271,000 at the Kilkenny Ormonde, and the largest single hotel asset sale was €86 million (Fáilte Ireland, Irish hotel investment in 2025).
New capacity is on the way. About 12,750 tourist accommodation bed places were under construction at the end of the third quarter of 2025, up from about 11,550 at the end of the first quarter, and around 71% of that construction was in Dublin (same source). Fáilte Ireland also noted that hotels slipped from fifth to eighth place in global investor rankings and that Dublin fell to fifteenth among European cities, which it attributes to a shift in investor preference across asset classes rather than a purely negative view of the sector. Bank of Ireland reported that revenue per available room rose 3% in 2025 despite uneven regional performance (Bank of Ireland via ThinkBusiness, secondary).
Building and Refurbishment in Hospitality
Planning data shows that most hospitality building work is on existing premises. In the year to the second quarter of 2026, 547 planning permissions were granted for hotels, restaurants and cafés, covering about 138,000 square metres of floor area. Of those permissions, 321, or 58.7%, were for alterations, conversions and renovations, 115 were for extensions and just 111 were for new buildings (CSO table BHQ07; share calculated). For comparison, 224 permissions were granted for office buildings over the same year.
Energy ratings show the gap between new and older premises. Of the 122 hotels given a non-domestic Building Energy Rating in 2025, 69.7% were rated A or B, reflecting how many of them were new or recently refurbished. Of the 485 restaurants and pubs rated, just 23.3% reached A or B and 13.2% were rated E, F or G (calculated from CSO table NDBER01). The older restaurant and pub estate is where refurbishment pressure, and the decorating work that comes with it, is greatest.
Shops show a similar refurbishment-led pattern: 48.2% of the 581 planning permissions for trade buildings in the year to June 2026 were for alterations, conversions and renovations (calculated), as our retail statistics for Ireland show.
What This Means for Hospitality Decorating
Hospitality premises are repainted more often than almost any other commercial space: they are occupied by the public every day, judged on appearance in every online review, and refurbished whenever they change hands or reposition. The figures above point to steady demand. Almost three in five hospitality planning permissions are for alterations and renovations, hotel investment topped €1.6 billion in 2025, and thousands of new bed places will need finishing before they open. Much of that work has to happen overnight or out of season so rooms and dining rooms stay trading.
The same refurbishment-led pattern runs across the wider commercial market, set out in our commercial property statistics for Dublin, and the trade capacity behind it is covered in our painting and decorating trade statistics.
Method and Sources
All figures on this page were checked at source in September 2026. Overseas trips and nights by accommodation type are from CSO table ITM05 (January to August 2026, published 29 September 2026), with year on year change and the hotel share of nights calculated by OS Decor. Employment is from CSO table QES03 (second quarter 2026) and enterprise counts from CSO Business Demography table BRA31 (2023). The VAT change, jobs estimate and SME shares are from the Department of Finance press release of 30 June 2026. Hotel transactions, prices per room, bed places under construction and hospitality insolvencies are from Fáilte Ireland’s review Irish hotel investment in 2025, published February 2026. North American share of stays, domestic travel, revenue per available room and the minimum wage are from Bank of Ireland’s Hospitality Outlook 2026 as reported by ThinkBusiness, and are cited as secondary. Planning permissions and floor area are from CSO table BHQ07 (year to the second quarter of 2026), consumer prices from CSO table CPM24 (August 2026), non-domestic energy ratings from CSO table NDBER01 (2025), and occupied commercial units from the GeoDirectory Commercial Vacancy Rates Report for the second quarter of 2026. Where a share or change is described as calculated, it was derived from the named source and the working is available on request. The page will be refreshed after each monthly CSO tourism release, the next Fáilte Ireland investment review and Budget 2027.
How OS Decor Helps
OS Decor paints hotels, restaurants, cafés and pubs across Dublin, working overnight, in phases or out of season so rooms and dining rooms keep trading. If you are refreshing bedrooms, a dining room or a whole property after a sale, our hotel painting services and restaurant painters Dublin teams can plan the work around your bookings, our commercial painting service covers larger projects, and you can contact us for a written quote with a fixed completion date.
