Sligo hotel chief says it’s all about survival this year
CATHAL MULLANEY TALKS TO CEO OF THE DALATA HOTEL GROUP ABOUT THE CHALLENGES WHICH THE INDUSTRY HAS FACED AND HOW HE SEES THE FUTURE OF SECTOR IN THE MONTHS AHEAD AS THE COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS ARE LIFTED
THERE are few things that Pat McCann has not encountered over the course of more than 50 years in the hospitality sector, but the current crisis presents anal together different challenge. The Bunninadden native is the founder and CEO of Ireland’s largest hotel operator, Dalata, with the group also making major strides in the UK market.
With 44 hotels in the portfolio, and 11 more under construction at present, Mr McCann has been one of the leading players in the hotel sector for some time, having first cut his teeth as a schoolboy working during his summer holidays at the Yeats Country Hotel in Rosses Point in the 1960s.
Now Dublin-based, Mr McCann is currently planning for a reopening of all of his hotels in July - some 15 remain in operation at the moment, but only for frontline staff.
The remarkable rise of the man who hails from
Rinnarogue in south Sligo began during those summer days by the seaside where his love for the hotel business first began to develop.
“My first foray was in Rosses Point, in what was called the Yeats Country Hotel at that point in time, a 23-bedroom hotel” Mr McCann told The Sligo Champion.
“Obviously, it has grown substantially since then, owned by the McEniff family but at that point in time it was just being acquired by Ryan hotels and I worked there during summer holidays when I was in Colaiste Mhuire in Ballymote and I got the bug and that’s how I started - as they say, the rest is history.”
The opportunity to spend time in Rosses Point was a new departure for a youngster who was used to the rolling countryside of Bunninadden.
“It was a wonderful life” he says of his time in Rosses Point.
“You can imagine a young fellow, coming from the bogland of Rinnarogue, which was a lovely place, but Rosses Point was a metropolis
as far as I was concerned. The experience of that and the wide variety of people you met and came into contact with, it was a great place to be.”
A student at Bunninadden National School, before progressing through his secondary education at Colaiste Mhuire in Ballymote, Mr McCann embarked on his journey away from Sligo in 1969 when, on completion of his Leaving Cert, his work took him south to Kerry.
“In 1969, when I did my Leaving Cert, I got moved to Killarney, and then I went to London when Ryan’s were opening a hotel in London in the early 1970s. I spent 20 years in total with Ryan’s, and then I spent another 18 years with Jury’s and then I started Dalata in 2007.”
Operating the Maldron Hotel and Clayton Hotel brands, Dalata’s reach is wide-ranging, and its portfolio extensive. 44 hotels - rising to 55 when constriction is complete on the 11 sites currently in operation - make up some 9000 rooms when fully operational. The Dalata Group employs just under 5000 people.
It is big business, but no business, big or small, has been able to escape the clutches of the coronavirus. 29 of the 44 hotels are closed at present; 15 are open, but only for frontline staff.
Changes will be coming down the tracks, and when hotels reopen, there will be a significant operational changes. Dalata continues to prepare for their return to business, and in many ways having some hotels open now allows an insight into what life may look like for the group when some semblance of normality returns.
Mr McCann says: “Out of the 44-odd hotels that we have, 29 are shut, 15 are in operation and those 15 are essentially looking after frontline staff, that’s really what we’re doing. They’re technically operational but they’re not open; you can’t arrive in the hotels and book in as you would normally, that’s not how it works.
“In many ways, it has been good in that way in that it will prepare us for what life will be like once we reopen the hotels. We’ve had a lot of learnings about social distancing, how we manage food and beverage, how we manage check-in and check-out, all of that kind of thing so yesterday we announced a whole range of protocols on how we’ ll start to entice people back into our hotels, hopefully at the beginning of July.”
Mr McCann says the beginning of July, but the Roadmap published by the government has hotels slated for reopening on the 20 th of that month.
However, he believes it is necessary to reopen earlier in order to avoid a surge in demand, and therefore crowding, before the end of August.
“One of the things I’ve asked government to look at is - we are scheduled to reopen on the 20 th of July, and I’m saying it’s a very short window then for people with families to get a break between that and the end of August, so what I’m saying is that they should consider bringing that back to the beginning of July to give people a little bit of time. Otherwise, what you’ ll find is you’ ll end up with a lot of crowding which really is not what you want.”
The financial ramifications have been widely reported, and Mr McCann says it could be two years before business across the board returns to pre- Covid-19 levels.
“2020 is about businesses surviving. The idea about being profitable in this current year is highly unlikely. Then, as you get into 2021, it’ ll be a year of rebuilding, and then 2022 hopefully we’ ll be back to reasonable levels of normality at that point.
“You’re down to the fact that you have zero revenue, that’s the reality of life and that’s the reality for the vast majority of hotels that had to shut down. There is simply no revenue so it will have severe impact on the financials of any business at this point in time.”
Much of the financial woe being predicted in the hospitality sector is attributed to the additional measures and guidelines that will be in place once premises reopen. Dalata, however, could be better placed than other hotels in so far as social distancing is concerned.
Mr McCann explained: “There’s a possibility of that [reduction in capacity] however at this point in time it’s difficult to call it because what’ ll happen is that it’s not necessarily the number of rooms that will be occupied, it’s the number of people that’ ll be in your hotel, that’ ll be the challenge so you could have a family of four and then you might have one room with one single occupant so it’ ll depend on whether it’s on the numbers of people staying in the hotel as opposed to the number of rooms sold. So every property will behave very differently.
“There’s a lot of debate going on at the moment about one-metre or two-metres on the social distancing side, for Dalata, while it’s an issue, it’s not as big an issue, because we have generally large hotels with large ground floors so there’s plenty of space to actually do what we need to do.
“But for a lot of other hotels where there are smaller buildings, smaller ground floors, it is going to prove almost impossible and that’s going to be the challenge, and likewise for restaurants, they will really struggle with this.
“But for everything else, we’re very confident that we can provide a very safe, relaxing, enjoyable location for people as they come out of this.”
In addition to applying social distancing measures and other guidelines, all hotel staff will require training to ensure they are fully aware of how to go about their work conditions in the ‘new normal’. Dalata’s staff have already started that process.
“As we speak, all of our staff who will return will go through rigorous training around the new normality as we see it and we’re lucky, we’ve been able to develop those training programmes in live situations where we have properties in operation.
“But obviously not training as one would expect normally, but it’s been very helpful in helping us devise the various rigorous programmes that we’ ll need as we start to reopen.”
It is likely the changes staff are preparing for will also apply to major social functions such as weddings and conferences. Many weddings have been postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic this year; beyond that, Mr McCann says 2021 offers some hope, despite very obvious challenges.
“In reality, where we are currently, it looks like a lot of those things simply can’t go ahead at this point in time,” he says.
“So you have a lot of things like conferences, meetings, weddings, dinner dances, all of those things will be very challenged as to how we can achieve what we need to achieve in a safe manner and yet make it attractive enough for people to utilise that facility.
“In the case of 2020, what we had to do by and large was move a lot of the weddings because people won’t risk it, a lot of them will move into 2021 from 2020 so it won’t be as big an issue as people think in 2020 but certainly as we get into 2021 it’ ll be very challenging and we have to be sure that we keep everything safe.”
As for his links with Sligo, his parents have passed on but Mr McCann continues to travel to Sligo to visit his sister, who lives in Curry, and his brother based just outside Ballina.
Reflecting on his time in the business, it’s clear that the love for his trade is as strong now as it was in Rosses Point all those years ago.
“I enjoyed it,” he says, “and I suppose I’m over 50 years in the business now and I don’t think there was ever a day I haven’t enjoyed, so I’m very lucky in that sense.”