{"id":782698,"date":"2026-09-26T00:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T00:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/782698\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T00:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T00:30:12","slug":"ashford-castle-manager-warns-over-difficulty-in-booking-helicopters-for-ryder-cup-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/782698\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashford Castle manager warns over difficulty in booking helicopters for Ryder Cup \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The general manager of Ashford Castle<\/a> in Co Mayo<\/a> has warned that if you don\u2019t have your helicopter already booked for the Ryder Cup<\/a> at Adare Manor Hotel<\/a> in Limerick next September \u201cyou are not going to get it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Niall Rochford made his comment on Friday as accounts filed at the Companies Office for Ashford Castle Ltd show pretax profit last year tripled to \u20ac3.93 million.<\/p>\n

The luxury resort firm tripled its pretax profit as revenue rose 9 per cent from \u20ac32 million to a record \u20ac34.9 million. <\/p>\n

Commenting on bookings at the resort for the Ryder Cup, Rochford said: \u201cWe are pretty much there but we have some availability left.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big issue and big concern at the moment is trying to secure helicopters or general transport because I think if you don\u2019t have that booked now, you are not going to get it. That is the challenge we are seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ashford Castle was on course for another record year at the hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201c2026 will be a record year for the hotel and 2025 was a record year,\u201d Rochford said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen an uptake in exclusive events where for weddings, birthdays, special events, clients take the entire property over for a number of days and there has been a significant increase in that business this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Michelin names 19 best hotels in Ireland, including four new additionsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Rochford said the potential bill for guests making such bookings run to hundreds of thousands of euro.<\/p>\n

Irish, US and UK clients have booked out the property this year with most bookings coming from the US, he said.<\/p>\n

Rochford noted Ashford Castle had greatly benefited from the college and NFL American football games that have taken place in Dublin over the past couple of years.<\/p>\n

The hotel\u2019s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation last year increased by \u20ac1.36 million to \u20ac7.9 million.<\/p>\n

The company last year enjoyed operating profit of \u20ac5 million. Finance costs of \u20ac1.12 million reduced pretax profit to \u20ac3.93 million.<\/p>\n

Staff numbers at Ashford last year increased from 327 to 353 with costs rising from \u20ac11.4 million to \u20ac12.29 million.<\/p>\n

Cash funds at the firm last year increased from \u20ac3.97 million to \u20ac15.49 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The general manager of Ashford Castle in Co Mayo has warned that if you don\u2019t have your helicopter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[101770,257839,5904,42801,6547,101769,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-782698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-adare-manor","tag-ashford-castle","tag-golf","tag-mayo","tag-ryder-cup","tag-ryder-cup-2027","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}