Adare Manor has been one of Ireland’s leading golf resorts since the 1950s, and it is becoming another major part of the 2020 Ryder Cup storyline, after the event’s organizers announced the venue will host the 2019 Ryder Cup.
Adare Manor is famed for its courses, which have historically attracted major professionals like Martin Kaymer and Matt Kuchar, but the glory days seemed to be behind it in recent years. In 2015, comedian Ronnie Corbett bought the resort in a move that raised some eyebrows. Corbett said the hotel needed to be modernized and also started a campaign for single occupancy rooms to make the resort more sustainable. The three-storey house of 46 employees would be turned into 41 permanent rooms and Adare Manor would become accessible to all. Corbett said: “We can’t do the general manager’s job. They don’t give up it lightly.”
The resort closed for renovations last year but has been reopened. A recent 20,000 euros investment saw the PGA Tour-approved range club and ski slope developed and refurbished. When the numbers of guests has risen as it should have done over the past few years, Corbett said: “They’re smiling again.” Since last year’s reopening, guests have enjoyed cocktails, sweet tea and movie nights at De Blaire’s Irish pub.
While hosting the Ryder Cup is still two years away, this gives organizers an early head start, in trying to drum up interest in an annual event that many visitors already know about. There was not much activity in adare, located outside Cork, for the 2018 Ryder Cup, partly because the location is rural and the local airport is far away.
For a decade or so, the Ryder Cup put a little town in north Cork on the map, but it started to lose traction in the mid-2000s, when the veteran players in the European team started to dwindle. There have been hundreds of international arrivals and lots of foreign press out here in recent weeks, which has been good for local businesses and restaurants. The money is flowing in.
Last year, after the British Open, the Ryder Cup brought in an estimated 2.5 million euros to the local economy, with $140 million in ticket sales.
It also brought many people into the area, as well as new hotel rooms, as travelers from Britain in particular made long runs to Ireland to get close to the action. Although some of those travelers were staying in the Adare Manor area, it was undoubtedly a boon to local tourism.
All this new activity has naturally helped demand for the hotel’s rooms, although rooms are still going fast. On Thursday, as the fourth round of the British Open was unfolding on the practice range at Adare, the Sheraton Adare at Adare Manor listed 76 vacancies, a 160 percent increase from the first day of golf. On that same day, a hotel spokesman said that they were “seeing incredible interest from Japanese golfers looking to scope out the beach for their first time.”