Edward Stephenson, General Manager of Jury's Croke Park Hotel describes a typical day
IN SUMMER, when there are events on all the time in Croke Park, I work a six- or seven-day week, which means that at this time of year I can take a bit of time out for travel. One winter my wife and I and our three kids spent two months touring Australia. Right now we’re just back from the Sierra Nevada, in Spain.
I’ve been general manager of Jurys Croke Park since it opened, in 2005. Every day I do an hour in the gym before work. That’s my time for me; the rest of my time is other people’s.
I’m normally at the hotel by 8am. The first thing I do is check how the breakfasts are going. It’s the most important meal in a hotel. Not everyone will have lunch or dinner here, but every guest will have a breakfast, and it’s the last thing they do before they leave us, so it has to be good.
Then I will check in with the night management team. In a hotel, if there is going to be an incident it’s going to be at night, so it’s always good to make sure everything goes off okay.
The morning is mostly taken up with figures – checking the numbers from last night, looking at trends and working out budgets.
At 11am each day we have an operations meeting. We have 70 staff here in the winter, rising to 120 in the summer, so there is always plenty going on.
The key to building a good hotel team is training from within. We have people in senior management who started as receptionists. The commitment of people who have been trained up from within can’t be matched.
I’ll have lunch in the staff canteen, and in the afternoon the bulk of my time will be spent looking for new business. That means getting out and meeting people. It’s how opportunity presents itself.
I’m just back from meeting a guy whose office space was pretty cramped. I suggested he consider a serviced meeting room at the hotel, and I’m currently getting that proposal together.
We also work with corporate clients to ensure they recommend us to their suppliers: we get more volume and they get a better discount, so it’s win-win.
An empty hotel room is a lost opportunity. Like everyone else in the hotel sector, we’re finding the current environment challenging, which is why so much of the rest of my time is spent devising and implementing sales and marketing plans.
In the summer it’s different. With 40 events – matches, conferences, concerts – in Croke Park, involving more than 40,000 people, the trick is to optimise our offering when we’re packed to the rafters. On those occasions there’s a buzz here you just don’t find anywhere else.
I finish up by about 6.30pm and then it’s home to start the second job.
In conversation with Sandra O’Connell