Brownie Points With Good Value

It was our wedding anniversary the other day. She is still with me after all these years. As Paul Simon sings, she must be “still crazy after all these years”
Anyway, there is still a bit of romance left in this old dog, so I whisked her off down to County Wicklow. The weather was nice and when the sun shines, Wicklow is indeed a stunning county.
We stayed at Tuilfarris House and Golf Club near Blessington, set on the Blessington Lakes in a gorgeous location. A superb golf course sweeps down to the lakes and provides a glorious backdrop of lake and mountains. It is easy to be distracted by the wonderful scenery. We played a round of golf on this championship course for €30. Two years ago, a round of golf here cost €125 and there was a line to book such was the popularity of the place.
A double room with bed and breakfast and dinner cost an astonishing low price of €98. The dinner we had was absolutely superb and was worth the €98 alone. Two years ago, it would have cost you that, but when you consider the entire package at such prices, it brings home the difficulty that hotels in Ireland are having in these unprecedented times of economic implosion.

When we had it good, we fleeced the tourists and now they don’t come anymore, it seems. Good value is arriving too late and only arriving because of price resistance by the consumer. Nobody could make money at the prices above – they are just meeting overheads to stay alive.
A combination of greed by all in the tourist sector during the boom times and both dollar and sterling exchange rates going against the euro made Ireland a very expensive place to take a vacation.
We quickly got a reputation as being expensive and that will stick, even with the good value available at present. It takes years to build a reputation in any walk of life but just one day to destroy it. And that is what Ireland has very effectively done; destroyed our reputation for value and friendly service with greed and arrogance in the good times.
It will take a long, long time to restore it, if ever.
In the meantime, if you can afford it take advantage of the value on offer.
My other half was overcome by the quality of everything at Tulfarris.

Needless to say, I didn’t tell her the price of the treat – I need the brownie points for later in the year!
Enough said!