Hotels charging €1500 for parade weekend

SOME hotels and hostels in Dublin are charging over €1,500 for a weekend stay for the St Patrick’s Day festivities.

Most accommodation in the capital is booked up for March 17 and beyond, and the prices for available rooms on offer have been ramped up — but it’s the hostels that are really milking it.

At the time of writing, we searched for availability for two adults in one room over two nights from Friday, March 17, to Sunday, March 19, and while Abigail’s Hostel, in Temple Bar, was charging €646 for a bunk bed in a sixbed dormitory, Leevin Hostel, in Mountjoy Square, was charging €1,825 for a bunk in an eight-bed dormitory! You’d need to fork out just over €4,000 to stay at the The Conrad, in St Stephen’s Green, while the Zanzibar Locke was expecting you to part with €2,659 for a onebed suite. Commenting on the exorbitant prices, The Irish Hotels Federation said: “unprecedented demand” has left the capital “sold out”. But consumer champ Dermot Jewell said it was an “absolute disgrace”. He said: “The level of profiteering, it beggars belief.”