NO BOOM AT THE INN: INSIDE IRELAND'S HOTELS:Castlemartyr resort in east Cork has ditched Celtic Tiger exclusivity and prioritised hospitality, warmth and value. But can its new operators, now answerable to Nama, ride out the recession in style?
A LITHE, ELEGANT bride with a passing resemblance to Pippa Middleton, in a shimmering, body-skimming gown, glides through the entrance and out to the sunny, stone-flagged patio. On the landscaped lawns, a young couple and baby are reclining on vast, kilim cushions, entertained by birdsong and the champagne-sipping style on the terrace (a mix of Dún Laoghaire and Cork sailing circles by the sound of it). Out front, excited little boys leap on to hotel bicycles that flank the entrance and race down the long, quiet avenue, stopping to pat a couple of Roy Daly’s beautiful little bog ponies.
In the lovely old manor house lobby, tubes of sun cream have been left on the grand piano for those caught unawares by the glorious weather. In the bar, a magnificent, stately space made inviting with armchairs and sofas, a young couple order mojitos and watch, enthralled, as the barman moves a few metres to the right, pushes up the sash of a majestic window and picks a few mint leaves from the window box for the garnish.
The atmosphere is one of warm, relaxed, well-ordered comfort. There are no false notes, no subservience, no oppressive grandeur. And there is possibly nowhere more lovely to land on a Friday afternoon.
For anyone whose predisposition has been shaped by stories from the resort’s first, overcooked, six-star incarnation, this Castlemartyr is a revelation.
James Coffey, now the young head chef at Lahinch’s Vaughan Lodge, who was hired to open the six-star kitchen for the Capella operators in 2007, remembers: “It was a case of don’t worry about the price. A main course cost from €48 to €50 and the restaurant was full. Tins of caviar were selling at the bar for €120. You’d find black truffles that cost €1,000 a kilo blocking the kitchen sink.”
The current general manager, Andrew Phelan, knows the story too well. “It was all about international guests for whom money was no object. There was less concern about car parking and more about helicopters.”
One of the many staffing tiers was the line of PAs (personal assistants) whose sole purpose was to engage with guests before arrival and to be available 24/7 to organise their every need. “Did you notice the [now disused] security hut at the entrance? Locals didn’t get past it . . . There was a sense of ‘who are you?’”
Phelan is acutely sensitive to all this, because he was the man tasked with “rebuilding the bridges” around Cork when the whole edifice collapsed in November 2008, and Dromoland stepped in to revive the €70m-plus, debt-laden corpse for Anglo-Irish Bank and the Supples, the Cork family who still own Castlemartyr.
Earlier this year, the loans slipped into Nama.
“The only difference it has made to us,” says Phelan, “is that instead of just the Supples and Anglo Irish sitting round the table, we now have Nama there as well. It has had no huge impact on my life or how we are doing things here . . .”
When Dromoland came calling, he and his wife Ann were running their own project management company. But the world-respected Dromoland brand represented a “comfort blanket” and some of its staff joined him to cushion the changeover. They included a married couple, Noreen and Dermot Fetton, as reservations and food and beverage managers respectively.
“It certainly takes you out of your comfort zone, to come to a place that’s starting from scratch,” says Noreen.
They re-opened in April 2009 to a haggling hurricane. “Everyone is hammering you on the phone but the fact is our rates are a lot lower than Dromoland. You’re trying to have this professional conversation but trying to hold on to a decent rate. You’d get comments like ‘Well I hope it stays fine for you’ and ‘Hope you manage to stay in your job’”.
She may even be understating it. According to an industry source, one Irish five-star had to organise counselling for its reservations staff at one stage.
Perhaps people are still angry at the scale of the rip-off in the boom years? “I’m not for one minute denying that we were over-pricing ourselves,” says Phelan. “Hotels were expensive. But look at what else was going on – a guy washing pots would have left for the buildings if he wasn’t on €25,000 a year.”
Nowadays, says Noreen, “everything is negotiable. The presidential suite was €2,500, but I’d be delighted to take €800 a night now,” she says laughing. “You’re always trying to gauge a person. You can feel the response. . . But there’s a base rate we won’t go under. If it’s a five-night stay, you might seal the deal with a round of golf, a bottle of wine at dinner or afternoon tea. If it’s a lean time, you might offer a complimentary upgrade. . . But one thing I’m sure of – we are good value compared to other five-stars.”
The weekend’s guests include engineer Joe Scally, who booked the mid-week, two-night-and-one-dinner package as a 19th anniversary surprise for his wife Pauline. It cost him €500. “We don’t do this regularly,” says Pauline warily. But they think it’s good value for a five-star and bears out her brother’s opinion. “He’s a hotelier and this is his favourite place”.
“The race we’re in is a long, hard race,” says Andrew Phelan. “Yes, there’s a €55m-€60m debt. I can’t worry about that. Our job is to take it forward and try to have a net operating profit. What Nama says is, ‘make it work’, not necessarily ‘cut prices’. But people are saying this is the only way we can do it – by, say, achieving an occupancy of 70 to 75 per cent at a crap rate. We have an offer of €198 per night with a third night free – that’s €400 for three nights BB; or two nights and dinner on one night. And no, we can’t survive indefinitely on that.
“There’s a difference between value and cheap. That’s where our industry crossed the line blindfolded. A room in Dublin 4 for €27.50? It’s madness.”
An industry source adds that when offering cheap rates, hotels are really eyeing the potential spin-off for bar and restaurant revenue. By this measure, the sad fact is that a person who can only afford rock-bottom rates probably won’t use the hotel bar or restaurant.
“They’re trading up from a very, very different place,” he says delicately.
It’s a tricky balance. Dermot Fetton, Noreen’s spouse and a man with a palpable passion for Castlemartyr, admits that while they’re at 90 per cent occupancy this weekend, it can be as low as 30 per cent from Monday to Wednesday. And there are massive bills to be met, untempered by recession, says Phelan. “We pay rates of nearly €500,000 per year and there’s not a sign of them being revalued. Power costs €55,000 per month in winter. The payroll is about €2,500,000 per year.”
AND THE PLACE is vast. If guests have a complaint at all, it’s about the marathon to the rooms. In Capella’s time, they put a pedometer on Lionel Buckley, a fit, 50-year-old porter. He covered 180kms in 10 days.
The accommodation manager, Dromoland-trained Tracey Wallace, probably walks even farther. She has a team of 24 to clean the rooms and lodges around the estate, but she returns repeatedly to every single unit over a 10-hour day, smoothing, dusting, fluffing up, checking the folds on the sheets, aligning the hangers, summoning the cleaner and checking again.
She sniffs the air in a suite and gallops off for an ioniser to kill the barely discernible smoke smell. She runs an environmentally-conscious operation, using only bio-clean products (never bleach) and aiming to build on the miserable 40 per cent prepared to re-use the bath towels. Anything she would cheerfully ban for nuisance reasons? Oh yes. Nail varnish. And – here’s a new one – Lucozade.
It’s Saturday and wedding organiser, Sian James, is busy meeting prospective wedding clients as well as co-ordinating another wedding today in the impressively airy, soaring, contemporary function hall.
Never mind the carpet-killing marshmallow fights (sweet buffets being the new wedding must-have), or the corkage arguments (“Everyone wants to do their own wine and they think we should do it for nothing,” sighs Phelan), weddings are where it’s at.
In three years Castlemartyr has gone from four a year to 70. That’s about two a week in season, each with about 150 guests, average menu price €60 to €70, or a total of €100 a head on average, all in. This is one area where the Nama tag could be perceived as a risk.
Weddings entail bookings often a year or more ahead, as well as large sums placed on deposit. Castlemartyr gets around this by arranging for the couple to place the deposits in escrow with a solicitor (a bond kept in the custody of a third party and only taking effect when a specified condition has been fulfilled) so there is no fear of losing the money.
For staff, the hallmark of the new era is flexibility and commitment. The phrase "it's not my job" is banned. All possible cuts have been made, says Phelan, "and we are getting back to reasonable pay levels now. But you need volume. We need people to spend a little. There is €70bn in savings in Ireland. We need some kind of stimulus. . . We're going to bust our asses to succeed. This hotel hasto survive at all costs," says Dermot Fetton, gesturing around the immaculate lobby.
“If it can do this when times are bad, imagine what it could do when times are good ?”
Series concludes
