Wexford hotel receives energy bill of over €70k for one month

Encouraging to hear as the colder months set in.

The Riverside Park Hotel in Enniscorthy, Wexford was hit with a €71,000 energy bill for one month – this equates to an increase of 350% for the same period pre-pandemic back in 2019.

Owner Colm Neville told the Independent that the bill for the same period three years before had amounted to about €21,000, with a similar amount of business and energy used.

“It’s like three-and-a-half times, or 350 per cent basically, in those three years,” he said, adding that Covid-19 had “twisted things a bit” in the years since.

Colm explained that the hotel had invested in air to water heat pumps before the pandemic, which are said to be more efficient. “Therefore you would have imagined that our energy bills might be even better than some,” he said.

He went onto say that every business is affected by the price hikes, and it’s not just the energy costs increasing.

That’s the energy impact in one month but before the increases that are coming in October we were anticipating €350,000 in the year and if it’s gone from €71,000 to €21,000 there’s €50,000 grand a month…

The €350,000 figure is just gas and electricity. It’s nothing about the 30 per cent increase we’ve had on the laundry costs because of course they use gas to dry the laundry and it’s taken account of the 25 per cent that our food has gone up or the 19 per cent that the drinks have gone up, and these are all from excess of energy costs that they are all paying and then the transportation costs.

He said that lights can be switched off and heating run a little later in the year, but that savings from these actions would be “minuscule” compared to the increased bills businesses are facing.

“It’s really a very bleak outlook for the winter without intervention,” he added.

Header image via Instagram/riverside_park_hotel 

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