Munster gave it as good a shot as they could but came up short in Saturday’s Heineken Cup Semi Final. Every cloud though has a silver lining, and the economic benefit of having two French clubs in the Final on May 18th could be worth an additional €14.5 million to the country.
UCD Smurfit Business School compiled data three years ago which showed that home fans travelling for Rugby weekends spent and average €299.21 as opposed to the €882.25 spent by fans travelling from overseas.
The increase in expenditure by having Clermont as opposed to Munster fans packing the opposite side of the Aviva Stadium to those of Toulon would then be as much a €14.5 million and that will be welcomed by tourism and hospitality chiefs even if their hearts may have been behind Paul O’Connell and his Munster team mates.
Flights from across France into Dublin that weekend are already selling at a huge premium with the cost of a ticket on Aer Lingus to get travellers here within 24 hours of the match kick-off coming in at over €300.
Hotel availability is already becoming patchy and the fact of having three French teams in town for the weekend, allied to Leinster playing in the Amlin Cup Final on their home ground of the RDS will likely make it the biggest sporting weekend of the year in Dublin.
Businesses looking to make an impression on French visitors will be spending on marketing campaigns to make themselves visible to the travelling fans and it is also expected that a number of professional service companies will be putting on events to mark the presence of international colleagues in the city.
Heineken, Amlin, Federal Express, EDF, Dove and Adidas are the principal sponsors of the games which will take place on Friday May 17th and Saturday May 18th.
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