Building boom in hotels spreads south

What do an old furniture warehouse, two period family residences, an outdoor swimming pool and a Victorian nursing home have in common? They have all been transformed into hotels in Cork city within the last couple of years - Isaacs, Hayfield Manor, the Maryborough, the Kingsley, and the Ambassador respectively.

The past few years have seen an unprecedented number of new hotels opening in the Dublin area. Now the boom is spreading south.

There still may be many who associate hotels primarily with family holidays and a stay of at least a week. Such hotels still exist, as do their particular clientele, but the key words linking the newly opened Cork hotels are "corporate sector" and "short breaks".

"It's the norm for new hotels to provide conference facilities, business centres and leisure facilities," says Michael Roche, manager of the Kingsley, a 53room hotel beside a weir. "It's what corporate clients want." The hotel was built on the site of what was Europe's largest outdoor pool, and opened in time for the first guests to watch the finishing stage of the Tour de France on the hotel's doorstep.

The Kingsley provides all modern facilities, as do the Maryborough and Hayfield Manor. It's also de rigueur in such hotels to have rooms fitted with ISDN lines, faxes, multiple phone lines, trouser presses, safes, satellite TV, videos, CD players and power-shower bathrooms.

Neither the Ambassador nor Isaacs has a leisure centre. Isaacs doesn't yet have a boardroom/ conference space available either. Tellingly, both hotels report the breakdown of their occupancy as being 5050 per cent (the Ambassador) and 3070 per cent corporate/tourism respectively (Isaacs). Occupancy figures are the reverse in the other hotels: Hayfield Manor leading the way, with 70 per cent of its business coming from the corporate sector.

The buzz words at both the Ambassador and Isaacs are "city breaks". Cork Airport is now bringing in direct flights from several European cities. "People are generally taking shorter breaks now," says Lesley Mangan, the sales and marketing manager of the atmospheric Victorian red-bricked Ambassador on Military Hill, with its panoramic views of the city. "We've had a lot of continental business and, of course, there's the home market."

Paula Lynch of Isaacs agrees: "Our domestic market is mainly composed of Dubliners on a weekend break in Cork."

What of older, long-established hotels within Cork, hotels like the Imperial, the Arbutus Lodge and the Metropole, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year?

"The older hotels have paved the way for us," says Ewan Plenderleith, general manager of the Hayfield Manor. "We're different from any of them, because we're the only five-star hotel in Cork." He puts this down to the attention to detail given by its owners, Joe and Margaret Scally.

"At the time we opened, there hadn't been much hotel development here for quite some time and we felt the city could absorb a hotel of a high standard. It's now a case of the older hotels having to reinvest in their own premises, because there are such modern facilities and high standards in Cork's new hotels."

"No new hotel these days will survive in one market only. You have to aim at being attractive to a range of sectors," observes Pat Chawke, the general manager of the Maryborough, a 57-room hotel which opened in Douglas in November last year.

The core of the Maryborough development is its period house, which was built by a merchant navy family in 1710. The hotel's five suites are located here, each of them furnished with antiques, and it foxes you into thinking you've strayed into some elegant Parisian apartment a couple of centuries ago. One rooms boasts a billiard table.

At £400 a night, who is occupying these rooms? "They're being taken almost exclusively by the corporate sector of the market: the visiting heads of multinationals based here in Cork, for instance," Mr Chawke reports.

It's rather a damning comment of the way hotel restaurants used to be perceived in this country that Michael Roche of the Kingsley can say of Otters, its restaurant, that "it's not like a hotel restaurant". Rightly or wrongly, the term "hotel restaurant" has long been a by-word for mediocre fare in this country.

According to Ewan Plender leith of Hayfield Manor, where the restaurant is called the Manor Room, the days of hotels catering for large dinner dances and social functions belong to a different era. "New hotels are making a focus of the food itself rather than the volume of people they can cater for. We're into quality now and smaller parties, rather than the traditional banqueting end of the hotel market. The biggest wedding we would cater for here is 32."

Isaacs, the lovely minimalist wood-and-stone hotel on McCurtain Street, comes with a double-edged advantage. The Isaacs complex has diversified over the years since opening as a hostel in 1991. There is still a hostel on the site but there are also now 11 apartments and the 36-room hotel, which opened in May 1997, and was originally part of the hostel. Out front is the well-known Isaacs Restaurant, which, in fact, has nothing at all to do with the hotel.

"There is definitely confusion within the market place about ourselves and the restaurant," says Paula Lynch, the hotel's manager. "They're a completely separate business to us."

Isaacs has its own restaurant, Greenes, which overlooks the recently-created waterfall garden at the back of the hotel. This garden has been magicked out of a slice of vertical rock between two buildings, within which a waterfall and plunge pool, ferns, potted trees and al fresco tables and chairs have been placed to create something special.

But will these prosperous times last? What would happen if there was a rerun of the painful 1980s, with factories and shipbuilding going under? To ask the hoteliers such questions is to receive looks of astonishment. The 1980s might as well be the Dark Ages in their book, and about as likely to recur.

Yet if, as at least three of the hoteliers say, the majority of their clients come from the corporate and business sector, have they not considered the consequences if some of the multinationals operating in Cork up sticks and head home? They shake their heads.

The Maryborough involved an investment of £7 million and will add another 30 rooms within the next six months. Hayfield Manor cost £6 1/2 million and is also expanding: the old (unlisted) house adjacent to the hotel will be demolished shortly and 30 new rooms built on the site.

The Kingsley also cost "between six and seven million". The Ambassador was bought and converted for £2 1/2 million, while Isaacs was converted from a hostel (which cost £1 million to purchase in 1990) for the relative bargain price of £600,000. This all represents big money and big confidence in Cork's future.

"Dublin has been the catalyst for much of the economic growth in Ireland," says Pat Chawke of the Maryborough. "We all look to Dublin."

No doubt all concerned in Cork will be watching the unfolding fortunes of Dublin's new hotels with very keen eyes.