Latest figures from leading discovery and booking platform, DesignMyNight suggest that St Patrick’s Day (this Friday) will provide a bumper weekend of trade for hospitality despite searches and bookings for venues getting off to a slower start than in 2022.

In 2022 there were almost 40,000 general searches on DesignMyNight for St Patrick’s Day the month leading up to the event and over 70,000 bookings were made through the site. Despite a slower start in 2023, searches are now increasing daily with the number expected to pass last year’s before St Patrick's Day on Friday and indications are that celebrations are likely to extend over the weekend.

Leighanne Bent, Senior Marketing Manager of DesignMyNight, explained “St. Patrick’s Day has everything in its favour in 2023 and hospitality has the chance to drive additional revenue by making it a weekend of celebrations.

'Customers will be receptive to meeting up with friends on a Friday night but, with England playing Ireland in the final round of the Guinness Six Nations Rugby Union Championship the following day, we are also seeing a rush of bookings for Saturday 18th March, with 28,000 reservations taken through the site already.

'It’s also likely that many Rugby fans will be enjoying St. Patrick’s Day in the pubs and bars of Dublin ahead of the match, with almost 30,000 page views for Dublin bars recorded in the last month, which represents a 400% increase compared to the same period in 2022.'

Leighanne continued, “Based on 2022 figures, when over 7,000 DesignMyNight searches were made for St. Patrick’s Day events on 14th March alone, we expect another surge in interest in the final few days of this week and hospitality operators have a great opportunity of reaching and converting these late bookers.

'Updated search engine functionality was introduced on DesignMyNight last month making it the first search engine on the market to accommodate queries across the hospitality sector for every kind of venue.

'This enables revellers to search and book for bars, restaurants, pubs and clubs in real time and the greater visibility is expected to help drive additional reservations through a simplified booking process up to and including St. Patrick’s Day and the final round of Six Nations Rugby matches,” ended Leighanne.

(source: https://www.designmynight.com/london)