St Patrick’s Day hospitality boost

Businesses in the hospitality sector including those in the restaurant, pub and hotel trade recorded a not unexpected surge in spending on St Patrick’s Day, with pubs and hotels performing particularly strongly according to AIB Credit/Debit card spend figures for March.

Hotels had their busiest day on March 17^th, recording over 50,000 transactions throughout the day as people enjoyed the national holiday. Meanwhile pubs recorded 345,000 transactions on the 17^th compared with only 28,000 transactions on the quietest day of the month, March 21^st.

But while restaurants recorded a surge in spending on St Patrick’s Day itself, their busiest day of the month was March 26^th, the day after payday for many workers across the country.

AIB provides one of the most comprehensive and accurate data sets on consumer spending in Ireland. Based on this data, AIB has revealed that:

• overall, spending was up 2% in March compared to the previous month as consumers spent €80 million a day throughout March
• digital wallet payments were up 8% with consumers spending almost €10 million a day using the technology, or one in every eight €uro spent during the month
• as people continue returning to bricks-and-mortar stores, e-commerce was down 1% in March.

The data was compiled from over one million card transactions by Irish consumers during March and has been anonymised and aggregated. All data comparisons are based on March versus February unless otherwise stated.