Aran Islands price inflation

errlloyd

My brother went to InisMor on my recommendation the other day - I'd been in 2018 and it cost 22.50e for the Ferry and 10e to rent a bike for the day, everything else on the Island was free access. He went last weekend and it was 30e for the ferry, 20e to rent a bike and 5e to access Dún Aonghasa.

Am I misremembering? Or did they just use Covid to add 60% on to the price of the trip?

endofrainbow

one word: inflation.

Plus you can't compare 2022 prices with 4 years ago.

errlloyd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119463010#Comment_119463010

Inflation is a laughable excuse for this. Annualised inflation has been running at less than 10 percent for less than one year - since 2015 inflation has even been negative some years and averaged around 0.5%. So a 60% increase is pretty far from inflationary. Inflation is also not just some set amount all prices go up, it's an average. So just because Fuel goes up by 50% doesn't mean Chicken Fillet roles have to go up at all. And most of the inflation we are seeing at a national level is supply side, not demand-side inflation. While I am sure there was an increase in the cost of the diesel to run the Aran Island ferry, I can't see how the input costs of accessing Dun Aonghasa have changed. And I know there was a pinch on new bikes - but at 20e per day a 500e bike is being paid off in less than a month - so unless they're replacing the whole bike fleet every season it's a pretty profitable enterprise.

I think it is more likely post covid recuperation has turned into the baseline - and if that is the case everywhere in Ireland than staycations truly are dead.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119463070#Comment_119463070

Fuel goes up by 50%

How do you think the ingredients for your chicken fillet roll arrive at the deli?

McGrath5

I take it the price of the Ferry was advertised before you boarded or did they threaten to throw you overboard unless you paid up?

Yes I agree the cost of holidaying in Ireland has gone up, unfortunately there are plenty of people out there willing to pay the prices they are charging.

Atlantic Dawn

The €5 Dún Aonghasa charge is from Heritage Ireland to protect and maintain access to the site, in my opinion it should be limited to a set number of visitors per day to preserve it.

errlloyd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119463104#Comment_119463104

I understand you not getting the context here, but if you read the OP you'll know that wasn't the case. The situation is that I recommended the trip to my brother because when I did it (not that long ago) it was a good price. They went because of that recommendation and felt it was expensive. It was only after I discovered that the price had increased significantly in the meantime.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119463103#Comment_119463103

This isn't an economics or business forum, so we don't need to get into this in massive depth here. But I am curious as to what percentage of the cost of a chicken fillet roll you think fuel is? There is fuel in the trucks that bring the constituent parts to the centra, but you'd get thousands of demi baguettes and chicken fillets in a van. You've to keep the lights on in Centra, and heat the ovens, so that adds a bit - but once again you're dividing that over the cost of thousands of products. I'm sure farm production and bakery production costs went up - but we don't seem to be seeing that passed on in wholesale prices, so they can basically be disregarded.

At the same time, you have other input costs that basically haven't changed. Rent, staff, fixed assets, cost of capital. None of them have changed (yet). The price of wholesale poultry hasn't changed. The price of garlic mayonaise also seems consistent. So maybe if we're being extraordinarily generous and we say that fuel makes up 5% of the cost of a chicken fillet roll, and a roll costs €5 - so the fuel component costs 25c, then a 50% increase in fuel costs should add 12.5c onto the cost of a roll, and the centra can either can take a hit to their margin, or increase the cost by 12.5c. So they increase it by 13c, it's 2.3% wooptidooo.

Inflation can be supply side or demand side. If everyone in Ireland got 10% richer than you could probably expect inflation to relatively equally increase the price of everything by 10% - that would be demand-driven inflation. But we have supply-driven inflation - what that really means is that supply chain issues have caused a restriction on a few things entering the country and as a result, they got vastly more expensive. Second-hand cars, fuel, random machine parts etc. Some of those have knock-on impacts across the economy, some don't.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119463278#Comment_119463278

I'm a socialist. I'm anti-capitalism. Your grievance is with capitalism.

5% of the chicken fillet roll is in the fuel...seems a very charitable % to me.

Farmers have miserable profit margins yet when the product arrives in store it's an automatic 100% profit margin.