SHEILA Gray (41) is the general manager of the Radisson SAS Hotel on the 1,300-acre Farnham Estate just outside Cavan town where a sleek, Nordic-style hotel has been grafted onto a country house.
The 158-room hotel opened last year and includes a conference centre and a 3,716sq m (40,000sq ft) luxury spa built around old buildings. An 18- hole golf course designed by Jeff Howes is due to open in mid-2008.
She has been busy hiring and building a team and currently employs a growing staff of 150, about 80 of whom are Irish with the rest from Germany, France, Lithuania, Poland, Australia, Britain, Russia, Belgium and Greece.
The Sligo native trained in hotel management at the Sligo Park Hotel before moving to London. She worked in a number of famous hotels, among them the Hyde Park in Knightsbridge (a very posh establishment now renamed the Mandarin Oriental); the Cumberland at Marble Arch; and the Kensington Palace Thistle. During the Gulf War she returned to Ireland for a spell at Dromoland Castle before going back to England. Although she enjoyed her time in London, Sheila came back to Ireland permanently in 1997 as deputy manager of the Slieve Russell Hotel in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan and, within seven months, had been promoted to general manager. She left in 2002 to work in consultancy for hotel groups before being hired by the Radisson.
She's bought a house just outside Cavan town centre and thinks "property prices are very reasonable". She'd "thoroughly recommend Cavan as a place to live" and described the county as "an untouched gem" and "undersold in terms of tourism". It is "unspoilt and not that far from Dublin". A golfer, she has made a lot of friends and found it easy to integrate.
