Tuesday 31 August 2010

celtic tiger

These lapses in vacation time and the end of summer give H and I good opportunities to plan the next round of holiday-making.  We have decided to return the beautiful Ireland in the Autumn, and we are finding ourselves with a virtual embarassment of choices.  We are thinking about taking one of the ubiquitous vacation cottages in the countryside.  These locations are fantastic and authentic, seemingly the result of the properties boom that hit Ireland ahead of the housing market collapse.  In this case, however, these investments may have been a bit dubious, too, since people in rural areas could quickly take on the financial burden of a second, less rustic and more ameniable home and rent the original to tourists.  It is difficult to say if that was a good plan, though it is a little unfair to compare Ireland to Greece, since the Greeks never showed promise as an economic wonder and it is unfair, I think, to say Ireland disappointed. 
One unintended result of economic rescue-breathing, however, may be becoming apparent there, besides our overwhelming selection of venues.  There is an over-abdundance, as well, in the bigger towns of hotels--zombie establishments, as Bloomberg reports.  Despite decreased demand for room, many resort hotels and guesthouses remain open but as vertible ghost towns, since hotelliers would be more indebted should they give up the business, shutter it because they would have to remit those stimulus funds that put them in business in the first place, taxing a lost enterprise.  Empty hotels compete with lower and lower rates and make it impossible for businesses that would be otherwise healthy to turn a profit.  This is all interesting--how one's tourist buck affects this macro-miasma--but we are more focused on exploring more of the country, whose charm will surely be able to withstand this sort of contrived catastrophy.