Suite success

THE FRIDAY INTERVIEW/Billy Hastings, doyen of  the North's hotel industry:AT 80 years of age, Dr Billy Hastings, doyen of Northern Ireland's hotel industry, doesn't stand on ceremony. Sitting in the bar of his Europa Hotel in Belfast, famed for being Europe's most-bombed hotel, he gets straight down to business on meeting me.

"An important man like yourself, from The Irish Times, doesn't come to Belfast just to see me," he says with disarming frankness.

Age might have dulled his hearing a touch and whitened his hair, but the veteran hotelier and publican has lost none of his perceptive powers.

I had got another appointment later that day and before I could say we had three hours to chat, he said: "Have you got some questions for me? What would you like to do? Would you like some lunch?"

Before I knew it, we were sitting in his Rolls Royce Seraph - registration BIL1066 (the year of the Battle of Hastings) - and on our way across the city to his five-star property, the Culloden, for a bite to eat.

En route, he chats about the many changes to Belfast he's witnessed, his family's involvement in the business and the various twists and turns in his life, liberally sprinkled with some questions for me.

"Have you not got some questions for me?" he asked as we drive past Belfast City Airport. "I thought you were going to have a list of questions for me."

Later, in the Culloden, he proclaims to the hotel's manager and his daughter Julie that I must be the only journalist in the world without a pen. It was a fair point, but it's hard to take notes in the passenger seat of a car, even one as comfy as Dr Billy's. And balancing a notebook on my knee, on a couch at a relatively low table, while we both scoffed fish and chips just wasn't a runner.

At one point, the Culloden's manager comes over to inquire about our fish. "It's not great," says a no-nonsense Dr Billy. It killed the conversation stone dead and freed me of any obligation to praise the dish.

While still involved in the affairs of Hastings Hotels as chairman, Dr Billy is now one step removed from the day-to-day decision-making within the business, which comprises six hotels in Northern Ireland and a half share in Dublin's Merrion Hotel.

His son Howard is managing director, while his three daughters have key roles in the business.

Dr Billy admits that the current recession has made life more difficult for Hastings, but he remains unfazed by the challenges ahead.

"You must be prepared for more challenging times," he says. "If you can't get ready for more competition, then you won't reap the benefits of the better times."

This is true but much of the trade of the Europa, the Culloden and his Stormont hotel in Belfast is made up of business people. The same goes for the Merrion.

Won't these properties be squeezed from the inevitable reduction in corporate trade during the recession?

"You tell a guy who has been going to a five-star hotel that he's going to Dublin next week and he's going from the Merrion down to a three-star. He'll look at you with a cross face . . . he's not going to pull in his horns."

Having survived the Luftwaffe and 25 years of the Troubles, which saw a number of his hotels bombed, Dr Billy isn't particularly fazed by the current economic slump. "I'm not waking up in the middle of the night due to the credit crunch," he says, matter-of-factly.

He bought the Culloden, which overlooks Belfast Lough, in 1969 when he was in bed with the mumps. It had just 13 bedrooms. It now has just more than 100 rooms and is considered the best five-star hotel in Belfast.

He bought the Europa in 1994 when it was a bombed-out shell and turned it into one of the busiest hotels in Belfast city. At the time, he was recuperating from a quadruple heart bypass.

"The last number of years have been taken up with developing that which we have now," he says. "They [the hotels] haven't been developed to their ultimate and there are still plans in the pipeline.

"We are not actively seeking opportunities, but I believe that over the next year, there will be bargains worth looking at."

He said Hastings' turnover this year would be flat at around £34 million. "That in itself is an achievement," he said. "The year was satisfactory, but we were under pressure because of expenses, primarily energy."

He describes bookings for 2009 as "very healthy".

He did make a bid of €70 million to buy the Portmarnock Hotel and golf links a couple of years ago, but missed out.

"I reckon it would have needed the same again to refurbish it. Under the present circumstances, I'm glad we didn't get it," he says.

Not surprisingly, given the business he's in, Dr Billy likes to travel and stay in top-class hotels. Each summer for the past eight years, he's enjoyed the sunshine in Barbados from the plush surroundings of Dermot Desmond's Sandy Lane property.

Every February, he sets sail on a cruise. "I'm fed up with the Caribbean, so I haven't made my mind up on next year."

Fair enough.

His favourite hotel used to be Claridges in London and he loves the Ritz for afternoon tea. He also has a soft spot for the five-star Burj Al Arab in Dubai. "It was the only suite I've stayed in where I had my own private billiards room."

It could all have been so different for Dr Billy. He worked in the timber business for two years as a teenager before joining the family firm.

His father owned a handful of pubs, which passed on his death in 1940 to Roy, his eldest son. Roy died at 30 from a kidney disease and the baton passed to Billy, who was then just 27.

Dr Billy admits that he was one of only a small number of "Prods" working in a business then dominated by Catholics. The pub business was a cash cow and provided the funds for Hastings to make a serious foray into the hotel trade in 1971 with the purchase of six properties from the Ulster Transport Authority.

He hasn't looked backed since and Hastings is now comfortably the biggest hotel operator in the North.

In 1997, he teamed up with businessmen Martin Naughton and Lochlann Quinn to develop the Merrion in Dublin, his first foray south of the Border.

"I have great respect for both of them as people," he says.

"I think we have the best hotel in Ireland . . . in Dublin, anyway. I don't think you will hear any horror stories about the Merrion. None of us is greedy. We like to put into the proposition what we take out of it."

Ironically, it could have been Jurys in Ballsbridge - now in the ownership of Sean Dunne - that marked his entry down south. "Jurys hotel was for sale in 1969 and I had a look at it," he recalls. "If memory serves me, it was sold for £700,000, which at the time was too much for me."

It's been something of a rollercoaster ride since then. He was kidnapped by the UDA and locked up at gunpoint by the IRA. He plays down both episodes. "That didn't happen every day or every week," he says, without fuss. "If it happened to you one day, you had a year to get over it."

But why not sell up and do something else? "Who was I going to sell to? There weren't many buyers around."

After 60 years in business, Dr Billy says that he has no regrets. "I'm still looking forward to tomorrow . . . regretting the past would be a useless exercise."

Nor has he any intention of quitting work, cashing in his chips and enjoying his millions.

"I don't like working in the garden and I don't like DIY. I play a game of golf, but once a week does me. They [his children] run the business now. I enjoy the business so much that if they ever wanted to dispose of me, I would feel it very much. Sure what would I do with millions?"

ON THE RECORD

Name:William George Hastings

Age:80

Family:Married to Joy. Four children: Howard, Allyson, Aileen and Julie

Lives:on a "little island" on Strangford Lough

Something you might expect:Prominent roles in most business lobby groups in Northern Ireland over the past 60 years. President of Northern Ireland Chest, Heart and Stroke foundation.

Something that might surprise you:"I've hundreds of hats . . . When Gen John De Chastelain [of Canada] was here, I told him that I didn't have a general's hat. He sent me his first general's hat with a nice note attached."