Parades, parties and pubs, not to mention St Patrick himself.
These are core features of traditional St Patrick's day celebrations.
And the demand for these is worth millions.
Tourists come to soak up the atmosphere and learn about the origins of Ireland’s patron saint, but for tourism services it’s the start of the season.
One of the key attractions for visitors is the St Patrick’s Day Festival in Dublin.
550,000 people are expected to attend the festival including 100,000 foreign visitors.
The festival hires 4,200 artists and performers, not to mention crews and other behind the scenes workers with an estimated 11,000 days of employment created by the event.
The value of the festival to Dublin is a €122m return to the economy, with an estimated €28m to the exchequer, according to festival CEO Richard Tierney.
"It’s important to note that the St Patrick’s Day Festival is the kick off to the Irish tourism season, so it has a very strong economic value," said Mr Tierney
Despite ongoing cost of living concerns, Mr Tierney doesn’t believe this has impacted on the festival, or visitor numbers.
"There’s still an insatiable demand for St Patrick’s Day and the festival. I think we’re great as a nation no matter what is thrown at us, we love being Irish and we celebrate being Irish, and I think that’s what the festival does.
"We don’t see any drop off in numbers, looking at overall international visitors coming this year, they’re saying they’re marginally down on last year. But we’re definitely growing and we’re going to keep growing it in terms of what we can do with it.
"At 12:36 on O’Connell Bridge we can have a billion eyeballs looking at us, so we’ve got to make sure that we’re giving the best cultural and artistic representation of Ireland that we can," said Mr Tierney.
Festivals and events across the country play a key role in providing a unique reason for visitors to choose a destination and increase footfall for local businesses, supporting jobs and revenue generation.
"St Patrick’s Festival is hugely important for Irish tourism," said Orla Carroll, Director of Product Development at Fáilte Ireland.
"Fáilte Ireland supports St. Patrick’s Festival Dublin as well as regional celebrations in Cork, Killarney, Limerick, Waterford, Sligo, and Kilkenny which last year generated €129m for the Irish economy."
The split for the economic impact figures is €110m impact from St Patrick’s Festival Dublin and €19m from the other regional locations.
This weekend is viewed as a showcase for Ireland with international media from Belgium, USA, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia descending on the island to capture a flavour of what’s on offer here.
"This year Fáilte Ireland is extending a Céad Míle Fáilte to 39 global print, broadcast and online media with a combined audience reach of 137 million that have travelled to Ireland this week to write, film, interview or post about Ireland on St Patrick’s Day," said Ms Carroll.
"They will also capture the many unique attractions and visitor experiences across the country that bring our history, heritage and culture to life."
According to Tourism Ireland, promotion at this time of year leads to the highest level of online research for 'holidays to Ireland’ annually.
It said the spotlight for Ireland created during St Patrick’s Week tees up spring and summer travel ahead.
In a statement it said: "This year, Tourism Ireland is excited to bring our new St Patrick’s Day video, global publicity programming, a St Patrick’s Day documentary and iconic greenings to the world. This is a moment to highlight that, while the world goes green for one day, Ireland’s beauty is evergreen, and we look forward to inspiring even more people to visit our island and experience its magic for themselves."
St Patrick’s day is generally perceived as being more positive for hospitality than retailers, but CEO of Dublin Town Richard Guiney is anticipating the Bank Holiday weekend to be busy for city traders, especially if the weather stays good.
"I expect that we will be at pre-pandemic levels of footfall over the weekend. The feedback more generally is that spend per customer for Irish people is down. This is probably due to economic uncertainty given the global political and economic uncertainty which has evolved over the past 6 weeks or so," said Mr Guiney.
He also believes lots of American tourists have travelled this year, possibly due to the strength of the dollar when they were booking.
"The average American stays 8.4 days and will spend €2,142 while here. This compares to a UK visitor who’ll stay 5.2 days and spend €631," he said.
So far this year there has been a softening in forward hotel bookings, however early indications are that they are seeing a significant boost in bookings for St Patrick’s weekend at levels similar to previous years.
The Irish Hotels Federation confirmed that while they don’t have current occupancy figures, business levels appear to be holding up for the most part, notwithstanding the fact that there isn’t a Six Nations Rugby home match this St Patrick’s weekend this year.
The group which represents over 900 hotels and guesthouses nationwide said it is too early to predict performance for the remainder of the year; however it is optimistic that bookings will pick up.
It also highlighted a number of ongoing concerns weighing on the sector and creating uncertainty, such as high levels of business costs and increased economic and political uncertainty.
While it also added that issues such as the passenger cap at Dublin Airport may be having an impact, the IHF said the extent of this is difficult to quantify as yet.
With hundreds of thousands of visitors, its no surprise this is one of the busiest weekends of the year for the food-led hospitality sector.
This year it will provide a much needed boost to the sector at a time when rising costs and a drop in tourist numbers in the first part of the year have put businesses under further pressure, according to Chief Executive of the Restaurant Association of Ireland Adrian Cummins.
"The St Patrick’s Festival arrives at a crucial moment for the industry, however, to truly maximise the potential of our food sector, we need to better integrate food and restaurants into our tourism marketing strategies by showcasing Ireland’s world-class culinary offerings to a global audience," he said.
"While this weekend will bring a welcome surge in trade, our sector continues to grapple with unsustainable costs. Many businesses are struggling and without targeted support, 2025 will continue to be an extremely challenging year for food-led hospitality in Ireland."
In its efforts to get people to "think green and buy Irish" this St Patrick’s Day, ISME is encouraging people to support their local pubs, restaurants and hotels if there’re getting together with friends and family to celebrate to keep the economy thriving.
Neil McDonnell, Chief Executive of ISME says the service and hospitality business have experienced big challenges and need support.
"We moved from the 9% to the 13.5% VAT, so the government’s slice of spend has gone up by 50% in a year and a half, and that has been very difficult for the service industry because they try not to pass 100% of that on, but in doing so, their profitability has been hit.
"Your typical restaurant cover, depending on where someone is going, is between €30 and €60. When you add drinks on top of that, suddenly you're making employment within those premises worthwhile, and this is why we encourage it.
"The hospitality, retail and service businesses are enormous employers in Ireland really, really big and St Patrick's weekend traditionally marks the time within the year when they are looking to make decent earnings until September until the autumn."
Buying locally made products, supporting small businesses and shopping locally can all have a significant impact in maintaining jobs and business in local areas.
Studies show that for every euro spent on Irish-produced goods, up to €4 of additional wealth can be generated within the local economy.
By banning the snakes St Patrick may have helped sway visitor’s decision to come to Ireland, but his real legacy might be the purchasing power associated with celebrating his life.
