Mary Britton:Mary Britton, who has died aged 82, was a woman of doughty nature and pioneering spirit, characteristics that served her well when the Troubles in the North frightened off 70 per cent of her four-star hotel's customers almost overnight.
As the catering and hospitality industries throughout Ireland bemoaned the effects of the Troubles, Mary Britton, whose Sandhouse Hotel in Rossnowlagh, Co Donegal, was barely 15km from the Border, launched her own aggressive battle to save her family's livelihood.
She and her late husband Vinnie had developed the hotel from a modest beach-side guesthouse and small pub.
Throughout most of the 1950s and up to 1969 it was a vacation magnet for English and Northern Ireland holidaymakers who returned year after year, attracted by a standard of hospitality and service that was years ahead of its time in the Irish hotel industry. Former British prime minister Tony Blair spoke in Leinster House of his holidays there as a teenager with his family which has roots in the area through his mother.
Then came the Troubles. With hotels throughout the Border counties facing heavy losses - some even shutting down completely - Mary Britton looked west.
She set out to market the Sandhouse, the northwest and Ireland in that order across the US where she was one of the first Irish hoteliers to launch a marketing campaign. Although vice-president of the Irish Hotels Federation at the time, she had no great contacts in America. She and her good friend Ann Moylett, of the Downhill Hotel in Ballina, were undeterred.
They stormed across the US on a marketing drive that was so successful that Mary repeated it annually from 1971 for the next 20 years.
Her eldest son Brian, who eventually took charge of the Sandhouse in 1992, has recalled: "They thought nothing of visiting 20 cities in 28 days." So well did the hotel become known in America as a haven of tranquillity, that Woody Allen and Mia Farrow stayed there with their family at one stage before they split. Hollywood star George Clooney was also a guest whose visit remained unreported, in keeping with Mary Britton's firm conviction that every visitor was entitled to confidentiality.
Mary Morrow was a native of Salthill, Galway, where she helped run a family boarding house before going to work for Powers bookmakers, a career partly inspired by conversations with the bookies to whom she sometimes served breakfast during the Galway Races.
She was transferred to Donegal town to replace colleague Nancy Cooke when she married local jeweller, the late Matt Britton.
Within a year Mary Morrow also married. Her husband was Matt's brother, the late Vinnie Britton who the year before, 1948, had purchased the small bar and adjoining four-bedroom guesthouse in remote and often gale-lashed Rossnowlagh.
The couple proceeded to develop the Sandhouse into a premier hotel and when severe health problems forced Vinnie to take a back seat, Mary took charge and reared five sons at the same time, all of whom are now involved in their own businesses - the nearby Smugglers Inn restaurant and bar, a windfarm, an oyster and mussel fishery, an architectural and design operation, and an art company as well as property development.
To anybody who asked if she ever regretted not having a daughter, her prompt reply was: "But I have. The Sandhouse!" Mary Britton won several awards for her services to Irish tourism. She is survived by her sons Brian, Conor, Barry, Willie and David and 12 grandchildren.
Mary Britton: born April 29th, 1925; died August 7th, 2007