The chief executive of Ireland's largest hotel chain has said he expects it will be 2023 before the hotel market gets back to 2019 levels of activity.
But Pat McCann said the market that emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic will be different to what went before it.
"There’ll be lots of different shifts that will have taken place in the way we work, the way we look at things, and the way some of our businesses work," he said in an interview today with the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC).
"So we have to be able to adapt and change to the new normality and there will be a new normality."
Mr McCann said the industry will need support to get through to the rebuilding process in 2022 and 2023.
He said the VAT rate for hospitality and tourism should remain at 9% permanently.
"Its rightful place.. is 9%, it shouldn’t be anything else," he said, adding that this is still higher than most other countries.
Experience of cutting the rate in the last crisis has shown that the exchequer does not lose from it, he claimed, and that jobs are created by it.
Mr McCann said the company, which owns the Maldron and Clayton brands, is financially healthy despite the crisis.
The business has €310m in cash or access to it and this will allow it to continue as it is without doing anything.
He also pointed to what he described as its good strong balance sheet that has the right mix of long-term leases and assets.
"We are in very good shape financially," he said.
But he said the share price performance has been "terrible" and doesn't reflect the company’s value.
The current market capitalisation of the business is around €600m, he said, but the value of the assets owned by the company is €1.2bn.
Asked about the prospect of Dalata purchasing distressed assets, he said it is more than likely such opportunities will arise in the UK.
"For the first time in a long time we are seeing value in London and that’s where there may be opportunities," he claimed.
Mr McCann said every one of Dalata’s 41 hotels is in operation across Ireland and the UK today, and the plan is to keep that moving.
"So far we are not disappointed as to where we are at," he said.
The hotel boss also underlined the important of maintaining Ireland’s connectivity to the rest of the world through the pandemic.
