Almost as soon as Oasis announced two dates in Dublin in the middle of August next year, hotel prices in the city started to climb.
By lunchtime on Tuesday, accommodation reservation site booking.com was warning that 96 per cent of the available rooms in the city on the weekend in question were gone, with some hotels charging hundreds of euro for the most basic of places to stay.
The full picture of how much attending the concert is likely to set fans back has yet to emerge, with full details on ticket prices yet to emerge, and many hotels yet to release their prices and availability for 2025.
A countdown clock has already been set on the Ticketmaster site, and promoters MCD said tickets will be priced from €86.50, plus a service charge, and will be limited to four per transaction.
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But if models commonly used by other acts are followed, there is likely to be a tiered structure, with many tickets selling for well in excess of €300.
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This Thursday represents 30 years to the day since their debut album Definitely Maybe was released, while 2025 will see their second album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? reach that same anniversary.
MCD Productions said plans are under way for the Oasis Live ‘25 tour to travel outside of Europe later next year.
The dates announced so far include Cardiff Principality Stadium on July 4th and 5th; Manchester Heaton Park on July 11th, 12th, 19th and 20th; London Wembley Stadium on July 25th, 26th and August 2nd and 3rd; and Edinburgh Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium on August 8th and 9th.
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As was the case when Taylor Swift and Coldplay first announced Dublin concerts for 2024 in the middle of 2023, hotel prices have spiked, with people looking to stay in three and four star hotels in the city on Saturday, August 16th, being asked to pay in excess of €400 in many instances.
The eye-watering prices have prompted fans of the band to take to social media to complain about the latest instance of the hospitalitysector inflating its prices to take advantage of high-demand events.
Taoiseach Simon Harris on Tuesday made an appeal for the hospitality sector to “act responsibly” when setting prices for visitors planning to come to Dublin for major events including the Oasis concerts. He said the tour would come as “great news” to music fans, and would also bring benefits for the Irish economy.
“I would encourage everybody to engage fairly in relation to this,” said Mr Harris, speaking to reporters at the Irish embassy in Paris, following a bilateral meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron.
“The issues around price gouging, around hiking up things at the time of major events, it doesn’t actually help anyone, because it ends up giving our city, and our country, a bad reputation. It’s much more in the interests, I believe, of hoteliers and others to act responsibly in relation to this. Let people come to Dublin and have a good time.”
Eoghan O’Meara Walsh of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC) said that, while the basic laws of supply and demand would apply to hotel rooms as they will to flights in and out of the country at what is already peak tourist season, it is too early to say what impact the Gallagher brothers appearing together on stage for the first time in many years will have on the pockets of their fans.
“Sometimes you hear of excessive hotel prices, but it is very much a minority of hotels that do that,” he said. “A lot of hotels will not have the prices for 2025 online yet so it is too premature to get a sense of what prices will be like next August, and there will be additional stock coming on supply,” he said.
He did point out that demand will outstrip supply. “The band are playing in Croke Park so there will be 80,000 people there each night, and around 20,000 hotel rooms in Dublin, with many of those rooms likely to be sold to tourists not attending the concerts,” he said.
“If the tourism season next summer is not great then there will be deals available, but ultimately it will come down to supply and demand.”
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