Kelly credits positive thinking for trend-bucking performance

HOTELS:One of Ireland's best known hoteliers has credited a business guru with helping his business to thrive in the recession.

Bill Kelly, the managing director of Kelly’s Resort Hotel in Rosslare, has said the successful year it had last year was down to the advice of Marcus Child, who was the keynote speaker at last year’s Irish Hotel Federation (IHF) conference in Kerry.

Kelly’s had an 89 per cent occupancy rate in 2009 and claims to have made a profit, despite some of the most difficult trading conditions ever experienced in the hotel industry.

The IHF described last year as “disastrous” for the industry with occupancy levels hovering at around 56 per cent.

Kelly, the fourth generation of his family to run the hotel, said the hotel took creative measures to drive sales, reduce costs and improve service rather than take a policy of retrenchment at a time of economic difficulty.

Child, a well-known motivational speaker from the UK, specialises in getting companies to reframe their situation and their attitudes to both employees and customers in the most positive manner.

Kelly was so impressed with Child’s speech at the IHF’s annual conference in Killarney last March that he has invited Child to speak at a three-day workshop in the hotel on March 8th and 10th.

“Marcus specialises in assisting corporate change through people and has an impressive reputation for helping people in management and service embrace change positively and successfully,” he said.

Kelly added that there needed to be an end to the negativity in the country. “The Irish public are continuously bombarded with bad news. Headlines such as ‘prices still in decline’ and ‘gloomy growth figures for eurozone’ are just examples of the general daily rations of doom and gloom. I firmly believe that the Irish economy requires a good injection of positive thinking and a ‘can do’ attitude. It is essential that we give people hope if we are to progress out of the current economic crisis.”