The Covid restrictions have had a huge impact on hotels across the country, everyone has had to adjust and adapt in order to keep afloat.
Boost My Business throws a spotlight on two hotels who have had to change their offering to accommodate a new market.
Romantic Castles of Ireland are primarily wedding venues owned by the Corscadden family. They have four castles in their collection - Ballyseede Castle in Co Kerry, Bellingham Castle in Co Louth, Cabra Castle in Co Cavan and Markree Castle in Co Sligo.
"Before Covid we were looking at our best year ever. All four castle properties had an increase on the number of weddings on their books than had previously. And we were spending considerable amounts of money on refurbishment," says Howard Corscadden, Managing Director of Cabra Castle.
"Markree Castle is our latest property, this was its third year of operation after its complete refurbishment, and it was looking forward to its best year ever."
Corscadden puts the uptake in booking down to the level of investment they had spent on all of their properties. "They have never looked as good as they do now," he says.
But any refurbishment plans for this year have been put on hold since March due to the uncertainty of the wedding market.
"Until we know roughly what date we can put this behind us, everything is on hold. There's no point spending a million euros on new bedrooms if you're not going to fill them, you're putting yourself under further financial strain," says Corscadden.
"But the good news is that we have an order book that is second to none. We have a bumper year ahead for 2021, if it's allowed to happen."
The majority of the couples who had booked their weddings in 2020 are still looking for that dream wedding so have transferred to a date in 2021 or 2022. "A few have gone ahead with the present restrictions; I’d say less than 5%."
With the flurry of staycations through the summer the business tailored its venues to accommodate the only market they could find during the restrictions.
"We looked at the experience guests would have if they were coming to one of our castles, and the priority was to ensure that they would feel safe, that they would enjoy the experience and go home with a positive outlook for the Castles," says Corscadden. "In that regard, we did extensive training with our staff."
"In fairness to the Irish market, it has come in stronger than it ever had before. We certainly didn’t have a bumper August but we certainly had an August and July that kept us afloat," he adds.
With the Cabra Castle location so close to the border, and Northern Ireland’s restrictions around weddings based on square foot rather than size of the wedding party, Cabra were unfortunate to have some couples cancel and move to a venues over the border.
"We just find this slightly unfair that we are losing out and then people can travel a couple of miles and have the wedding that they want just over the border," explains Corscadden. "It’s difficult enough as it is, but these things make it even more difficult."
Down in Limerick city, Limerick Strand Hotel, which overlooks the Shannon, have had to reconsider their offering.
They have always been in the corporate hotel sector and have always marketed themselves towards business clientele, that was of course until all corporate events were cancelled and no one is travelling for work under the current guidelines.
"We're in the heart of Limerick city, and we have large banqueting facilities for 10 to 500 people - we’ve a fantastic health club with pool and we’d be renowned locally for our food," says Stephen O’Connor, General Manager.
"Our typical guest would have been a corporate guest, we also did about 40 weddings a year, a lot of conferences, both national and international and we would be seen locally as the place to go for a family celebration."
The lockdown announcement in March meant that the hotel had to close, and changes had to be made if they were to re-open again.
"It was probably one of the most difficult days I've had in hospitality, it was a very dark day," he says. Standing in front of everybody and saying we had to lay off all those people. We had a really great team, really good hospitality people."
"Thankfully, we did reopen on July 3, and that was a really positive day and we were able to bring back more people onto the team," Stephen O'Connor said.
During lockdown they had launched The Strand At Home which offered their customers a takeaway service which they used to both keep in touch with their customers and offer them a little normality.
"For me, it was an indication that things were going to be a bit different going forward. We had to change, we couldn't wait around until things turned back to normal," says O’Connor.
"We had to look at markets we didn’t do as much business in previously and that typically was our leisure guest - we had to pivot," he says.
The profile of a business guest and leisure guest is completely different, and the hotel and staff had to change their way of thinking around that.
"All the fundamentals were right, we had to change who our customer was and who it was going to be - all relatively speaking, we had a good August," he adds.
The Strand have also made changes to their Halloween and Christmas packages which are now catered towards family events, gone are the days of packed corporate Christmas parties in December - for now at least.
Another market the hotel is looking at is student accommodation. Under the current restrictions, college courses are being delivered part remote and part on campus. To save students from renting full time in the city the hotel is offering packages for student who are up studying for the week.
"We put together our student packages, so students can come and stay in The Strand for the week and that's working really well," adds O’Connor.
