'I'm all the time on duty - I'm like a little angel looking after people'
Francis Brennan explains what it takes to run a five-star business.
“PEOPLE SAY IF you’re a priest or a nun, you have a vocation. If you’re a hotelier, it’s a vocation – you just like to help people all the time.”
Fussy, frantic and always putting his guests’ interests first, Francis Brennan is very much a hotelier of the old stock.
The star of RTÉ’s At Your Service and Francis Brennan’s Grand Tour, which claimed a quarter of the Irish audience share on Sunday nights this summer, his hospitality duties are more important than his media profile.
He owns the five-star Park Hotel in Kenmare, Co Kerry, which he runs with his brother John, who will re-join Francis as co-host of the At Your Service for its ninth season in 2017.
There is no such thing as a typical work day for Francis Brennan – ”Glory be to God, you couldn’t put me in a box!” – but he is usually out of bed at 7.20am and doesn’t clock off until 11pm.
During his shift, he consults with the chefs in the kitchen, checks guests in and out, handles queries – and frequently tells his American patrons that Google Maps is wrong.
“Google Maps to Cork will add 42 minutes to your journey and 28 miles,” he says during a five-minute rant on the subject. “They can’t believe that. I say, ‘You don’t do that, sir, because you’re wasting your time.’”
Francis and John Brennan
Costs
The 19th century Park Hotel has 47 rooms and offers “47 choices” to guests, which poses a challenge for the Brennan brothers.
“Not one of our bedrooms is the same. Every single bedroom is different. That’s a challenge if you have a party of four coming because they’re all going to get different rooms.
“Certain persuasions of people (get annoyed) because their friend’s bedroom is one foot bigger than theirs or they have one window instead of two. The challenge would be to get all that right.”
A night in a deluxe room costs around €440 – not exactly small change, but nowhere near the 2005 high of €526.
The hotel is profitable and has been for a number of years, he insists. The most recent accounts for Beechside, the firm behind the Park Hotel, show that it made a profit of just under €27,000 in the year to 31 December 2013, pushing accumulated profits to around €2.1 million.
That said, running costs are putting a strain on the business, he says.
“Energy costs are just frightening,” he says. “Electricity is unbelievable. It’s gone up hundreds of percentages over the last eight years.
“We’ve extended our season this year, so we’re not closing until 28 November. I’m not a believer in staying open that late because I think once we put down everything on a sheet of paper at the end of the season, our energy (costs) will wipe us.”
He is also offering a discount to Dunnes Stores value club card members, which he expects will impact revenue.
Brennan says he has weathered through worse. Around the time he first came to fame in 2008, revenue at the hotel was down 53%, according to Brennan. Accounts for Beechside confirm that it reported a loss of over €418,000 that year.
“It wasn’t easy because with a five-star hotel, if you have two people or 100 people staying, you have to have a doorman. The scale of cost is very, very high when you have a fall in revenue.”
The Park Hotel, Kenmare
VAT rate
All of the hotels were fighting to stay in business, he says, but it was being finicky about maintenance that saved the Park Hotel.
“We were always good on room decor,” says. “We kept our place pristine. When the trouble hit and we didn’t have any money for anything, we were in good nick.”
The hotel employs 72 staff, 38 of whom are full-time. Brennan says that when the going got rough, nobody was laid off and salaries remained the same. Loyalty with staff is important to him, especially in a small town like Kenmare.
Tourist spend is on the rise, which Brennan credits to the Wild Atlantic Way, but he is quick to dismiss the idea of raising the preferential 9% VAT rate for hotels, even as the sector picks up.
The west of Ireland, he argues, hasn’t seen the same recovery as Dublin, and there is now more competition in the hospitality sector as well as higher costs.
“When we started there were only five, five-star hotels in Ireland. There are now 40-something. You see, to keep the standard right, you would always have to keep chipping away.”
Last year, the Park Hotel made one of its most extravagant purchases: a 12-seat cinema that cost €42,000.
“Was it used a hundred times this year? Probably not. But it is a beautiful cinema. You have to do these things. It’s very much a funny industry in terms of the input to the output.”
Selfies
Time is probably the biggest expense for Brennan’s business – he is “never off duty” even when he is away from the hotel.
“I would always, always, always see the old person on the side of the street. I’d see the people who need help getting their suitcases up the steps. I’m all the time on duty.
“I’m like a little angel going around looking after people. If you’re a hotelier, that is your nature.”
He also dedicates a significant amount of time posing for photographs with fans and he has been spotted everywhere from New York to Addis Ababa.
“There are Irish people all over the world and they always catch me. How in the name of God?
“Sometimes at the hotel I really should just stand in the front hall and let them all take photographs and do no work.
“Invariably the mothers of Ireland have the phone in the bottom of the bag, turned off and they don’t know how to turn it on. Then they have it upside down or the wrong way round or they start taking photographs of themselves instead of me. The whole thing is time.”
He says going to the airport is a nightmare because everybody want to take picture, “but that goes with the territory”.
Although he’s not bitter about fame, he likes to borrow a quote from the late actor, Mick Lally, who played Miley in Glenroe.
“He said that he found fame ‘a little inconvenient at times.’ I couldn’t agree with him more. There are times when I think ‘Please don’t – I’m eating my steak, I’m having my dinner with friends and I don’t want to do a photograph now because I’m eating.’”
John Cusack has stayed at the hotel
Seeing as he is “nearly almost famous” himself, Brennan understands what celebrity guests want when they stay at the Park Hotel.
“They just want to be left alone. Now, we’re very lucky in Kenmare and the Park Hotel because people could be here staying and they’re never touched. Woody Allen came here for 14 years on the trot and nobody noticed him. John Cusack was here last year. People that would know John Cusack wouldn’t be thinking of him being here.”
Other than that, Brennan treats all of his guests the same: with empathy, which for him sets apart a five-star experience from anything else.
“To be able to read people and understand where they’re coming from, whether they have the money to go to a Michelin star restaurant or the Hard Rock Cafe, is very important. I’d always be good at that.”
