Sports fans a great match for historic family-run hotel

IN an ever-changing business environment, companies are constantly being challenged to reinvest in their businesses in order to stay current and relevant to the market place. For those in the hotel and hospitality sector, this need to invest in upgrading and modernising facilities remains a constant.

While the sector suffered particularly badly during the recent downturn, those who made such investments are now reaping the rewards. John Loughran from the Sandymount Hotel in Dublin 4, explains how his hotel has turned the corner and is now thriving again.

SANDYMOUNT Hotel on Herbert Road, in Dublin 4, with its 168 bedrooms, is the oldest and largest family-run hotel in Dublin City. Set up in 1955, by George and Rosaleen Loughran, the hotel is now owned and run by their son John Loughran. Employing 90 staff and with an annual turnover of more than €7m, the hotel enjoys close proximity to the Aviva stadium as well as being within walking distance of Dublin city centre.

It’s 8am when I visit John in the hotel. The builders are in and teams of tradesmen are busy renovating the hotel’s lobby and reception area. But with a full house last night and breakfast to be served, its business as usual for John and his team.

“Because we are the closest hotel to the Aviva Stadium, this is a major source of business for us particularly on International rugby match days. The stadium has become a popular location for conferences and concerts and that too brings significant business,” says John. “We’re only a 15-minute walk to the 3 Arena and the Bord Gais theatre so we get a steady flow of guests from these. Last night, for example, we had 275 guests staying with us, many of whom who were attending the Ed Sheeran concert in the 3Arena,” he adds.

The hotel is also close to the area now commonly referred to as the Silicon Docks, which has enabled John to tap into the growing corporate market with visitors to Google and other leading firms in the area regularly staying in the hotel. And there’s also a strong group tour business as well as a steady stream of individual leisure visitors, mostly from overseas.

The atmosphere in the hotel is relaxed and informal. The layout is quirky, something John puts down to the fact that it was not purpose-built but rather a collection of adjoining Victorian houses, dating back to the 1800s, that have been amalgamated and modernised over time.

While many entrepreneurs can claim to have been born into their businesses, John literally was.

“My parents came from Northern Ireland originally and moved to Dublin in the early 1950’s where they rented a house around the corner on Tritonville Road. My father worked as a motor mechanic and while they had little or no money at the time, they certainly didn’t lack ambition,” explains John. “When the original house on this site came up for sale, my father persuaded their then next door neighbour, who worked in a building society, to give him a loan to buy it. At that point, it was a semi-detached house but their vision was to turn it into a four-bedroom guesthouse. Three weeks after they moved in, I was born,” he adds.

Over time John’s parents acquired other adjacent properties and what had started out as a single semi-detached home soon morphed into a sizable hotel. Growing up in the family business, John and his four siblings helped with everything from making beds and washing dishes to serving tables and helping out in the kitchen. After school, he completed a degree in business studies in Trinity College before joining PWC. However, once he had qualified as a Chartered Accountant, he resigned. He realised that big practice wasn’t his thing and so, along with two college friends, set up his own successful accountancy firm specialising in auditing, taxation, and financial consultancy.

In 1988, John’s parents passed the ownership of the hotel to himself and his brother – a graduate of hotel and catering studies from DIT Cathal Brugha Street. It was a good combination of skillsets. His brother ran the operations side of the business while John concentrated on all things finance. Soon after, he sold his share of the accountancy practice to his remaining business partner and focused instead on developing the hotel. In 1999, he bought his brother’s shareholding in the hotel which made him the sole owner of the business. However, having borrowed the money to pay off his brother, he now found himself with debt on the business equal to half its asset value. On top of that he needed to invest significantly in upgrading the hotel in order to compete with the vast sums of money being spent by his competitors in neighbouring hotels.

“I was just getting used to digesting my new financial position when the downturn in the economy hit and to make matters even worse, I then found myself competing with bank and Nama-controlled hotels that were selling rooms at rates as low as €29 per night,” says John. “It just wasn’t sustainable. The effect was an almost 60pc drop in our turnover.” His dealings with his bank understandably became strained. In 2008, and reflecting the level of pressure he was under, John had a breakdown and was hospitalised, However the whole experience gave him a new perspective on life and on business. Today, he has learned to take each day as it comes. “No matter how well you plan or how hard you work, there will always be some factors that are outside of your control. You just have to learn to deal with things as best you can and to operate within your own capacity to deal with issues,” he says wisely.

Three days a week, John heads to the gym at 6.30am. By 7.45am he is on the beach in Sandymount where he does 30 minutes of meditation before heading to the hotel. It gives him clarity – and it shows. While more focused now on happiness than ambition, John remains committed to making the hotel the best it can be. And as he comes to the final phase of the current refurbishment programme for the hotel, at a cost of over €6m, he tells me that this time, it is being funded largely from hotel revenues rather than from debt.

“We also recently received planning permission for an additional 19 bedrooms and are in discussions with Failte Ireland with a view to upgrading to four-star hotel status in the coming months.”

John’s own family are now also involved in the business. His son, Gerard, is operations manager while his daughter, Sinead, works in marketing. It was also through the hotel that he also met his wife, Audrey, when she worked as a receptionist during the time his parents ran the place.

“However, it is really our dedicated and loyal staff that gives the hotel its genuine family feeling and why so many guest keep coming back,” he says. John Loughran is a positive and upbeat businessman. He has seen much and endured much over many years in business. But it is his commitment to the hotel, to his customers and to the continuous improvement of the place that has helped the Sandymount Hotel survive and now thrive again.