Griffin takes a shot at luxury tourism market

Former Wexford hurling manager is moving into the high-end sector with his latest hotel venture, the €30m Monart Destination Spa, writes Siobhán Creaton

It's ten years since hotelier Liam Griffin led the Wexford hurling team to glory at Croke Park. As another battle looms for the coveted Liam McCarthy Cup this weekend, Griffin, a prolific commentator and much sought after motivational speaker, will have plenty to say about the match.

Hurling is undoubtedly his great passion and he says that if he could have pursued sport as a career, it would have been his first choice. "Sport took up most of my time in school. In those days though, sport was seen as an indulgence rather than a career option," he says.

Becoming a hotel manager was the obvious career choice for Griffin, whose parents had gone into the business in their mid-50s, buying a small hotel in Rosslare. He was the youngest in the family and had got a taste for the business helping out around the place. "I always liked the hotel business," he says and went on to study at the hotel management school in Shannon, County Clare.

Throughout his studies there, he continued to play Gaelic football and hurling with the Newmarket-on-Fergus club and enjoyed some success. But it was always going to be hard to continue to indulge his passion in the hectic hotel world.

He left his beloved sport behind when he moved to Switzerland to work at the Mövenpick Hotel Group. "It was a big wrench as it marked the end of my sporting career. The hotel industry wasn't conducive to playing sport," he says. "That was a massive disappointment for me. I suppose when I later took over as manager to the Wexford hurling team, I took some of that disappointment, that I hadn't reached my potential on the field, into the role with me."

He returned to Ireland after a few years, joining the Intercontinental Hotel group, that then owned Jury's hotel in Ballsbridge, in Dublin and later worked with Bord Fáilte as a standards adviser.

His stint in Dublin ended when his father died in a car crash and he moved home with his family to Wexford. Griffin says while the tragedy influenced the timing of that move, he would always have returned to his native county.

"I suppose I had always felt homeless to some extent when I was away from Wexford. A big part of GAA people is being part of your own community and this is especially strong if you have played for Wexford. It's a type of tribal call. I just knew deep down that I wanted to go to Wexford," he says.

He and his wife Mary bought the family hotel from his mother and set about running the business. His wife, who was a publican's daughter, knew the trade and in those days, the hotel's main business was the bar and they worked together there.

"We built it up and modernised it, but we were very restricted by the site. The market was also getting saturated with new hotels and our business was mainly the bar. I felt that if we didn't move on and develop, I would end up like my father, in my mid-60s standing behind a counter hoping people would come in," he says.

When a hotel came up for sale in Kilkenny, Griffin formed a partnership with his friend Liam Curtin to buy the hotel. Curtin came in as a minority shareholder but died suddenly before the hotel had opened. "This was a great setback. It left me in a very difficult position," Griffin says. He bought out Curtin's widow over time and set about running the two hotels.

His next move was closer to home, where he set his sights on the Ferrycarrig Hotel, a debt-ridden company that was being sold as a going concern. Again, he looked to bring a partner on board, this time linking with Tom Noonan, the founder of the Noonan Construction group.

Their two companies are still intrinsically linked. Noonan is a minority shareholder in the Griffin Group, a hotel and property group with an estimated value of about €70 million. "We developed a business partnership and a business model that is still working well," he says.

Griffin had always adopted a hands-on approach to managing the small Rosslare Hotel and suddenly found that he was hiring others to manage what were to become his flagships.

"I was working six nights a week in Rosslare as I couldn't say to the locals there that I was too busy to be there," he explains. At the same time, he had a young family and he says he made great efforts to try to create a semblance of normal life for them.

"Mary moved back from the running of the business to rear the family and I tried to be there for tea and in the mornings, and I committed to us taking a family holiday every year, which is difficult in the hotel business." In the midst of his busy life, Griffin also got involved again with hurling at his local club in Rosslare.

Over time though, he decided to sell the Rosslare Hotel to concentrate on the two bigger hotels. "I probably stayed with it a bit longer than I should have, but it had belonged to my family, and there was sentiment involved," he says.

One lecturer from his time in Shannon offered some valuable advice, he says, and it is something that he continues to adopt. "He told us that while hotel management is a tough and hard business, if we had any hobbies or interests that we liked to do well, we should try to involve them in their business" he recalls. "That really struck a chord".

It is the marriage of his passion for sport and business that led Griffin to put huge energy into developing the leisure and activity centres at his two hotels and most recently that has led him into the luxurious relaxation venture that is the Monart Destination Spa, near Enniscorthy.

"You get a lot of 'me too' operations in the hospitality industry. When we looked at developing an activities club, we looked at clubs and gyms across the world to create a club that I, as a sportsman, would use myself," he says.

Monart, which opened last December, is the Griffin Group's highest risk business venture, and the new spa with over 100 acres of woodlands, was a €30 million investment. It is an adults-only facility designed and operated to the standards of the world's top spas and has already been rated as one of the world's top 10 by Forbes Magazine.

It was built after many long discussions with his family, two of whom work at the Hotel Kilkenny. "I told them it was high risk. This was a bungee jump," he says.

Within two years though, he expects the group will break even on the venture and is happy that it is attracting a growing clientele, both male and female.

He likes to poke fun at men of his own generation and younger who wouldn't be seen dead in a spa. "A lot of older males think a spa is a place for big blouses, but young people don't and we have been surprised and pleased by the amount of young males that have visited Monart," he says. "It's a very different concept to adding a spa to a hotel."

Monart is working with Fáilte Ireland in the marketing of Ireland as a spa destination internationally and he believes it is way of the future for the hospitality industry. "We know it's a long haul and we are prepared for that," he says.

Griffin is proud that his sons are involved in the business and hopes the group will continue to grow and prosper and remain in the family. "I would like to think that the business will stay solid and move on. We have created the platform for three places that are at a very high standard. I hope the family will stay involved, but you can't put down parameters and you can't control things from the grave," he says.