Make the most of the gems on your own doorstep

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The clear skies and soaring temperatures would have ensured that nobody needed much convincing to holiday close to home over the past week or two – but too often we tend to overlook the gems on our own doorstep.

Recently our brood took a few days to visit our nearest neighbours to the immediate north – and a few days in Mayo was all it took to lift the spirits.

Westport is little more than an hour away, but it is one hell of a tourist hotspot – a spotlessly clean town with a huge choice of hotels, pubs and restaurants, and the world of amenities and facilities within a stone’s throw.

It’s a short hop to Louisburg or Newport – ancestral home of Princess Grace – or Clare Island, adopted home of the Saw Doctors, and the drive up through Maam and Leenane would justify the whole experience on its own.

But this is not just about enjoying the local natural amenities – it’s the fact that forward-thinking hoteliers are working so hard to capitalise on that by finally waking up to the sort of promotion and marketing that the rest of Europe has been at for a generation.

For too long, our tourism industry was reasonably content to sit back and simply point to this legendary Irish welcome, as though a nod in a visitor’s direction made high prices and poor services more palatable.

But no longer – now there are hotel packages with amenities built in, so that the family gets to make the most of their stay.

There is also a greater sense of community and cooperation, in that all of these amenities don’t have to belong to the hotel you’re actually staying in – this is a more holistic approach to holiday-making that ensures you are spoilt for choice.

We stayed in the Castlecourt Hotel in the heart of Westport, where a family room is what it should be – a comfortable place for everyone to retire to after a long day, as opposed to an ordinary room with a couple of fold-out beds that wouldn’t suit a three year old, let alone a pair of rapidly growing teenagers.

Without leaving the hotel, you had the pool and leisure complex as well as the ubiquitous spa, while outside the door you were two minutes from the famous Matt Molloy’s pub, one of the finest hostelries in Ireland.

If ours were younger, they’d probably have enjoyed the Kid’s Club, but the friendly staff at the Castlecourt weren’t proprietorial about their guests – they were only too happy to suggest a myriad of things to do within easy reach.

Indeed they’ve put together a range of attractions at discounted prices for guests – and a rep from each of these providers comes to the hotel every morning to help you make your choices.

Westport House is an obvious starting point, what with everything from its Adventure Island high ropes to its Pirate Adventure Park or even its pitch and putt – but more and more, the big attraction right through the heart of Mayo is the Greenway.

You only have to look at the amount of cyclists around town to see what a success story this has been – and again, they do their best to make sure it’s all manageable; you don’t have to cycle back because they’ll collect you; you can hire a bike, and there are plenty of things to do en route.

But for years the biggest impediment to holidaying at home was the price – if you go to the sunspots, the food and drink was cheaper and you’d get a package holiday for the price of a night in an Irish hotel.

That’s not the case anymore – the Castlecourt, for example, does a three night break for two adults and two children, which includes evening meals in a superlative restaurant, for just over €550.

That may not appear cheap but equally, when you break it down, it’s around €50 each per night for a four star hotel in the heart of one of Ireland’s most popular tourist hotspots.

The specially priced family passes for Westport House and all of its facilities worked out at less than half the normal price, and there was also a cut off the Greenway prices so that you felt you were getting bang for your buck every step of the way.

Little wonder then that the place was packed, as was their sister hotel, the Westport Plaza, next door – but then Westport has been to the forefront of tourism in this country for longer than most.

That’s not to say we don’t have visionary tourism providers in our own midst, because we do – it was just that this was service with a smile and at a price that doesn’t clean out your pocket.

And that’s what holidays, home or away, should be all about.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.