Eoghan Corry Talks Travel February 2026
New direct service to Barbados, new 5 star hotels in Ireland but no third Michelin star, Eoghan Corry is back with the latest travel news at home and abroad.
(Whoah) We are going to Barbados
Typically tropical, or maybe not. Dublin is to get direct flights to Barbados for eight weeks starting March 31st. The way this came about is convoluted, even by aviation standards. The service is to facilitate bookings to Barbados from Manchester, activated before Aer Lngus had to pull the route due to a combination of cost and trade union belligerence.
Sunbound Mancunians will, instead, be flown to Dublin and on to Barbados from there. Normally these would be shovelled off on to British Airways of Virgin direct flights, but Aer Lingus will have the A321XLR capacity it needs to cope by then, with the arrival of the brand new Saint Brendan and the return of the Saint Liodáin, whose landing gear after a hard landing in December was not as badly damaged as was first thought, or the viral video would suggest.
Flights are not on the Aer Lingus booking engine at the time of writing, but that is likely to change.
Read: Where to stay in Barbados, our top picks of hotels and villas
Ireland’s home stay crisis.
Only a delay in the legislation is allowing Ireland’s holiday home industry to continue through what may be its final summer, as politicians and department officials continue the line that shutting AirBnb, and the entire holiday home industry with it, will save them from the wrath of the public over the housing shortage.
The same politicians intent on doing this are also complaining that prices are too high for holiday makers. Visitor numbers to Ireland for 2025 were down 12.9% on the previous year and 44% on pre-pandemic. Shutting down 25% of Dublin’s bed capacity is a peculiar way of trying to solve the problem.
Cuba’s crisis.
One of our favourite holiday destinations is facing an existential crisis. The first airlines have started cancelling flights to and from Cuba, the island who dared, as Dervla Murphy described it, die to a jet fuel crisis since their supply from Venezuela was cut off by Donald Trump’s war games.
This follows the move a few years ago to invalidate the ESTA for anyone who had been to Cuba, purely to disrupt the island’s tourist industry. About 4,000 Irish travel to the island each year for an amazing cultural experience, as well as the sun and sand.
This is a new departure. Iran, Venezuela, North Korea or Syria are not viable holiday destinations, Cuba is. Or was.
A five star is born.
It has been a long time since a new luxury hotel was launched in Ireland. Judging by how long it took to try to sell the K Club and Mount Juliet, the sector is much lauded but little loved by investors, wary of high staff and maintenance costs and precarious margins.
Many of our lead luxury hotels, such as Ballyfin and even audacious Adare, are vanity projects with lots of pomp and little profit. How great to see the arrival in the sector last year of Dunluce Lodge in county
Antrim and now (drum-roll) the Hawthorn looking across Galway bay at the capital of Connacht, which launches in March.
Not to be outdone, Mayo is launching its own high end hotel, the former Hotel Westport reinvented as The Grace (O’Malley or Kelly, take your pick according to your degree of enlightenment). There is always room for a little more luxury, we say. Mine is a Midleton very, very rare.
A Michelin three star is NOT born.
When news came that the Michelin star ceremony was being brought to Dublin, there was an amuse-bouche of excitement that one of our fine dining restaurants would finally make the grade and gain that elusive third Michelin star.
Perhaps Ahmed Dede’s Baltimore would surprise or the beloved starch of the grand-daddy of them all, Patrick Guilbaud. But the after taste was not as Michelin star as a fine diner would like. We got two new star recipients, always welcome, bringing the total to 25, including a THIRD restaurant in county Galway, and a tear of joy from Sandy Wyer. Otherwise it was a transplanted English ceremony and a somewhat patronising approach to the host city. Next time we should host the French ceremony instead.
That cap, a recap.
The passenger cap at Dublin airport may be gone, but the debate it started is going to get louder as the year goes on, judging by Dublin airport’s January passenger figures. If things keep going the way they are (and two new routes have been announced in the past week) passenger numbers will be between 41 and 42 million at year end.
What the cap kafuffle has done so far is rustled into action a few campaigners, not many, but a small group of well-platformed one. It looks like the politicians are not ready for the noise, especially as the solution to everything aviation appears ready to activate the Revolut account (“viva la Revolut”). It is a tad optimistic if they expect to quieten the aviation-outraged with the prospect of free money.
Eoghan Corry is Ireland’s leading travel commentator and aviation specialist in Ireland, as well as being a historian, author and broadcaster. He has extensively travelled as a travel journalist and has been a speaker and moderator at tourism and aviation conferences including the World Tourism Forum, Tourism Ireland and Thailand Tourism.
