A West Cork hotelier says he could be facing energy bills of €90,000 at the end of the winter season.
Neil Grant at the Celtic Ross Hotel says the electricity bill at the hotel for the month of August was €24,600, triple the bill issued last August despite the hotel controlling their energy.
He says this Winter could be the hardest ever faced by hospitality businesses with insurance bills also rising as hotels enter the loss making months of November to February due to reduced footfall.
The rising bills are eating in to the money made over the Summer months which in the past got hotels through the winter period.
The Government is being urged to provide financial support towards retro fit schemes for hotels as the industry tries to navigate through the crisis.
Speaking to RedFM News, Neil Grant from the Celtic Ross Hotel says they have a Green Team at the hotel to help them operate as cost efficently as possible:
"We'll just have to be as clever as we can, you know with regards to if the hotel is quiet midweek, that you'd push everyone in the same section of the hotel and you turn the heat off in the other sections. That's what our green team is there for, they're trying to look to all these little things and they've done a great job thus far. So hopefully, we'll just work through that and see how we get through it."
