As general manager of the DoubleTree by Hilton London- Chelsea, Anthony Barrett is effectively on call 24 hours a day.
The 29 year old leads a 63-strong team of staff, ensuring all sales, revenue and customer satisfaction targets are met and, for him, no two days are the same.
Having started his career as a chef, the Dubliner is well versed in the realities of 80-hour working weeks and dealing with tricky customer expectations – though he wishes his career guidance counsellor had warned him about the working hours.
“Working in the hospitality industry is hard work. It’s not a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 job. I wish my career adviser in school had told me that.”
Barrett studied hospitality management at DIT Cathal Brugha Street, securing a placement at Jury's upon graduation. 'Proudest moment' Over the past nine years he has worked his way up at five different hotels across the group, and last August he was appointed general manager of the 172-bedroom Jurys Inn Chelsea. "It was my proudest moment – being made general manager of a central London hotel before the age of 30."
The hotel was last week rebranded DoubleTree by Hilton London-Chelsea as part of a franchise agreement between Jurys Inn Hotel Group and Hilton Worldwide which means three Jurys Inn properties will rebrand.
Barrett previously worked for Jurys in Chelsea in 2004, after finishing college. “I did a degree in hospitality management at DIT and, as part of the course we were required to do a six-month work placement. I had already worked in a Dublin hotel, so wanted to spread my wings.”
In 2010 he took up the position as interim general manager at Jurys Inn Milton Keynes. “The general manager in Milton Keynes went on maternity leave so that opportunity came up. I was unsure initially whether it was really a job I wanted. Milton Keynes has a very corporate client base and huge banqueting facilities. The banqueting suite can host up to 320 people.”
When the manager came back from maternity leave, I moved to Birmingham to take up a deputy manager position there. A £4.7 million refurbishment was under way at the hotel at the time. “One Sunday morning was particularly chaotic as we only had half a restaurant due to the refurbishments and 700 people for breakfast.”
He says being a hotel manager often means he has to deal with tricky guests and challenging situations. In 2007, shortly after the Brighton hotel opened, there was a stag party booked in which was fancy dress themed. One of the members of the stag party was dressed up as a gorilla and started running up and down the corridor of the hotel and knocking on guests’ doors, something which Barrett had to stop.
“There is so much more responsibility being boss. The buck stops with you.”
Before Christmas, there was a power cut in southwest London where all of the sub-stations from Imperial Wharf to Putney Bridge packed in. This meant there was no power in the Chelsea hotel for 1½ hours. Guests were arriving at 9.30pm and they needed to be checked in despite the power cut and darkness.
“The Jurys Inn management and reservation system is cloud based, so we were able to contact the nearby Jurys Inn Croydon hotel and organise for them to log in as the Chelsea hotel in order to check in guests.”
Barrett says social media sites such as TripAdvisor play an important role in business and managers should not be afraid of them. "I check TripAdvisor and social media sites such as Twitter every day to see if anything has been written about us. We got a certificate of excellence from TripAdvisor. . . our scores this year have been extremely positive. Some are negative and we respond to all those. We also respond to every fifth good comment." Customer satisfaction He also pays close attention to customer satisfaction surveys, discussing them regularly with his 63-member team.
“We monitor them very closely. It’s great to get positive feedback but negative is more important. We are always looking for ways to improve.”
He says communication is vital in hotels. “We have a meeting every morning at 11am. We run through the list of everyone who is arriving that day, including whether any VIPs are coming. That can be difficult as sometimes celebrities check in under false names for privacy.”
So what’s the secret to getting an upgrade? “If you ask for an upgrade, you might be lucky. If you’re nice to someone, they’ll be nice to you.
