When it comes to repeat business in tourism, word of mouth about value for money is key.
On returning to their home countries after a visit abroad, most travellers typically focus on three things - the weather, what they did and how expensive or not it was there - when recounting their holiday experience to others.
So in terms of repeat business, or referred business driven by word of mouth, what visitors experience around cost is vitally important.
According to Fáilte Ireland, the country has fared reasonably well in this regard in recent years, with 8% of tourists reporting they got poor value for money and 80% saying they experienced good value.
But as that organisation's chief executive, Paul Kelly, told an Oireachtas committee in recent days, the early indications suggest these scores are likely to worsen over the summer.
Over the last few weeks, anecdotal stories of apparent "rip-off" charges and "price-gouging" by hotels, car hire operators and other tourism services here have abounded and are quickly coming to define the outside in view of our tourism economy.
Anecdotes are never the best data upon which to base assessments, but it is clear that the sector is facing a growing perception problem.
Hoteliers on the offensive
The Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) went on the offensive during the week in an attempt to try to counteract some of the increasingly negative narrative - a narrative which in the era of social media can quickly spread abroad.
In essence its argument is that high prices that customers have been reporting are the consequence of a significant supply and demand imbalance in the hotel sector, particularly in Dublin.
As a starting point, it argued the number of hotel rooms available in the city (which has historically been under-served by hotels in the last number of years) is 3,000 lower than where it would have been, had the pandemic not disrupted construction.
Of the stock of 22,492 registered rooms in the capital that are available, the IHF says just 82% are actively in use as hotel accommodation.
Another 15% are being used for government business like housing Ukrainian refugees, and the remaining 2% are out of use due to staff shortages, or because they are being used to house staff or are being renovated.
On the other side of the equation, the IHF claims demand has returned much stronger than anticipated, giving Dublin the highest occupancy rate of any city in Europe at 83.6% in April.
But with this hotels scenario also being replicated across car hire, the tourism industry finds itself on a sticky wicket.
The hotel sector operates a business model similar to that of airlines, where groups of seats - or in this case rooms - are sold at a particular rate, and when those are all gone, another tranche of rooms is released at a higher rate.
This process continues until only the last rooms are available, generally at a steeply higher cost than those in the first group to be placed on the market.
So in a normally functioning market, where supply can keep pace with demand, you'd expect that there would be a reasonable choice of rooms offering value, until you get much closer to the chosen date of stay, unless there is a big event on or some other reason for rooms to sell out early.
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But in this country right now, according to the IHF, depressed supply coupled with strong demand has led to the bulk of the rooms that are available being sold much earlier than normal, leaving just a small pool at the upper end of the price continuum.
To illustrate its point, the IHF says that coming into June, 80% of available hotel rooms for the month had been pre-booked, up from 65% compared to the same point in 2019.
The situation is further complicated by the way some of the big booking engines operate and what they require from hotels using them.
And it's that overall unusual dynamic, it says, which has seen prospective visitors being faced with limited choice and prices per room in many cases around the €300 a night mark or higher for one to four star hotels when they have gone onto popular booking websites looking for a room over the coming weeks.
A reasonable explanation?
On the face of it, it stacks up as a reasonable explanation, based on pretty fundamental market principles of supply and demand.
We may not like it, but the industry is entitled to adopt whatever business model it chooses - it is a model that has been used for quite some time and hasn't just been introduced to take advantage of the current circumstances.
Although it could be argued that given those unusual circumstances, hotels should consider over-riding the usual model by releasing the final tranches of rooms at more "normal" average prices to increase the perception of value.
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The IHF and tourism leaders in general don't dispute that there are some operators who are deliberately taking advantage of the situation to jack up prices - but they claim the numbers are small.
They say the proof of this can be seen in data collated independently by STR, which shows average rates in April were €154, lower than London, Rome and Amsterdam, with indications it will be around €177 in May - around 15-16% higher than the same month pre-pandemic.
That's not an insignificant increase, but has to be seen in the context of the soaring cost of energy, food and materials, as well as staff shortages that are leading to higher wages.
Collectively it isn't an explanation that consumers will necessarily want to hear - after all nobody likes feeling like they are being ripped off, regardless of the reason.
And it does make for great fodder for tabloid headlines and indignant politicians trying to score points with voters in Leinster House.
But with this hotels scenario also being replicated across car hire, the tourism industry finds itself on a sticky wicket.
Indeed, rising prices and staffing pressures mean other tourist focused businesses like restaurants and pubs are also facing growing questions about value for money and service standards.
The industry can't do a whole lot to fight this perception, because many of the circumstances driving supply, demand, pricing and labour market dynamics, are beyond its control.
Yet it must, by taking as pragmatic and innovative an approach it can to pricing, upping its game on service and bending over backwards to provide value for money over the coming months.
Because unless it does take decisive action, the sector is running the risk of sustaining significant damage locally and internationally, at a time when it is already struggling to get back on its feet again following the ravages of Covid.
