Galway hoteliers are today gratefully totting up the boost to business that the Galway Races brought as the festival fortnight comes to a close. The races, together with the Volvo Ocean Race in June, took some of the edge off the nightmarish season that is blighting the Irish hotel trade.

There have been more than 100 liquidations, receiverships and examinerships in the hospitality sector in the past six months, figures from financial advisory firm FGS show – double the number in the same period last year.

"There's a steady increase in the number of hotels that are failing," said the receiver appointed to one of the most recent cases, Kieran Wallace of KPMG.

Last week Wallace appointed the Maldron Hotel group, headed by former Jurys Doyle CEO Pat McCann and his management team, to White's Hotel in Wexford to keep it open and trading.

A liquidator has been appointed to Balmaford, the company behind White's Hotel's €40m redevelopment between 2004 and 2006. It invested €9.6m in the project.

Under the tax incentive that pertained at the time, the investors involved are entitled to offset their investment against their personal tax bills for seven years after the redevelopment, but this is likely to hinge on the hotel remaining open. If it doesn't, in theory a Revenue clawback could apply.

It's in everyone's interests to avoid closures. Wallace has recently enlisted Maldron to manage three hotels, two that are in liquidation and one that is in receivership. "All are trading away," he said.

Most hotel industry figures would rather die than acknowledge the elephant in the hotel room, but Frankie Whelehan of Irish hotel operator Kasterlee, which runs the Clarion hotels in Ireland, tells it like it is: "There is a complete oversupply issue."

As a result, hotel categories are cannibalising each other in a scramble to lure punters.

"The five-star hotels are dipping into the four-star markets, the four-star into the three-star business and so on," said Whelehan. "In some sort of perverse way, maybe Nama, which will control most of the hotels in the country before long, will be in a position to address this," he said.

The growing number of hotels like White's is making things even tougher for others in the trade, according to Whelehan.

"Say you have a hotel; you've built up the business, added the spa, a leisure centre, an extension, and you're actually surviving. Then down the road another hotel gets into trouble. The receiver goes in and it reopens its doors with somebody managing it and room rates of €40. You have to compete with that. It's the next wave that will hit the industry," he said.

A 30% dive in Revpar (revenue per available room, the measurement of performance in the trade) so far this year and a 15% drop between last year and 2007 is the reality of the situation, Whelehan said.

On the hotel property front, lack of funds from banks is hampering activity, estate agent CBRE's latest bimonthly report said, even though hotel transactions "are being actively negotiated at present".

Moyglare Manor Hotel in Maynooth, Co Kildare, sold for a reported €3.3m, the review said, and detailed negotiations are proceeding with the short-listed bidders for the Blarney Golf Resort in Cork.

CBRE said there were was an encouraging level of buyer interest in the Bewley's hotel at Westmoreland Street in Dublin city centre, which is for sale for between €12m and €15m, and in the former Ormond Hotel at Ormond Quay in the city, owned by Bernard McNamara, which is for sale for €7m. Both hotels came to the market in recent weeks.

Planning permission has recently been granted for a new Chris Bennett-owned 234-bed hotel at Leeson Lane off St Stephen's Green in Dublin, while new hotel applications were also approved in Dublin's Temple Bar and North Circular Road.

It would take nerves of steel to develop right now. Close to €7bn is what Irish hotels carry in debt, according to a report issued last week from accountants Horwath Bastow Charleton.

Anglo Irish Bank, which is owed over €80m by hotelier Hugh O'Regan, opposed a court application on Thursday for an examiner to be appointed to three of his firms.

Jurys Inn shareholders are putting another £30m of equity into the group and will also borrow £30m to open more hotels in England and Scotland.

Last week the family-run Lynch Hotel Group was granted an interim examiner, with €22.85m in debts. The group owns Breaffy House Hotel in Castlebar, George Boutique Hotel in Limerick, and Haydens Gateway Hotel in Ballinasloe.

That suggests the good times are a long way from returning and Whelehan estimates that there are another three challenging years ahead for the hotel trade.