Arriving through the doors of the Merrion Hotel is like stepping back in time. Not as far back as 1756, when the first foundation stones were laid in the construction of the townhouses, nor 1997, when its current owners – Lochlann Quinn, Martin Naughton and Billy Hastings – first welcomed patrons to the hotel, but back just a few short months ago pre-pandemic. As the world enters the ‘new normal’, the Merrion Hotel has somehow maintained the essence of the ‘old normal’, exuding a pre-Covid lightness and charm, whilst still following all the HSE guidelines.

I’m greeted by a doorman who discreetly directs me to the hand sanitisation stations just inside the door. They have to be pointed out as you could easily miss the sleek silver dispensers that stand to attention like elegant sentries at the entranceway. A perspex screen surrounds the reception desk to avoid staff donning masks, thus preserving the warmth of a smile. Guests are offered a bespoke reusable face mask (sourced through the designer Louise Kennedy, a patron and neighbour of the hotel).

In the bar and restaurant, waiters wear clear visors allowing for more of that personal connection. And that’s where the pandemic add-ons end, visibly at least. Behind the scenes, it’s the tip of the iceberg. There’s an ongoing list of measures to ensure guest and staff safety. The onerous task of leading the charge falls to the hotel’s impassioned general manager of the last 23 years, Peter MacCann.  

Cancelled reservations, lost revenue

The Lord Monck Suite at the Merrion Hotel

Like countless hoteliers around the country, MacCann has been dealing with cancelled reservations, lost revenue, and the anxiety of not knowing how long the coronavirus pandemic will wreak havoc on the world.

Originally from Meath, Peter started his career in Fitzpatricks before moving to the UK to work with Trusthouse Forte. He worked at eleven different hotels in the group before returning to Ireland to join the newly opened Conrad Hotel. His first general manager role came at Sheen Falls Lodge in Kenmare, but only lasted a year as he was lured back to Dublin by the Merrion job. He has been general manager since it opened in 1997, working alongside his wife, Brand Director Dorothy MacCann, whom he credits as being “the real brains” behind the hotel.

“I’m coming up to 25 years now, but it’s not hard to stay here,” he says. “The owners are outstanding. The manner in which they run their companies and oversee this is based on integrity, decency and honesty. I really believe I have the best job in the industry in the country. It’s a combination of the people I work for, the product that we have and most importantly the team that’s here.

“At the end of the day, a hotel is the team that work in it. Our job is not to serve, but to make people feel good about themselves. I say to the staff every Monday morning ‘welcome to the Merrion, this is not rocket science. It’s the simplest business in the world. All you’re going to do is make people feel good about themselves and we’ll show you how to do it’.”

“Hours are reduced. Rosters are changed. We did a lot of cross-training. A lot of the people here can work in five different departments, so the wage cost isn’t going up.”

Making nervous travellers feel good in the midst of a global pandemic must be an arduous task, but MacCann takes it in his stride. “You have to believe in what you do. Maintain the level of confidence in the team. Work hard putting the protocols in place so you know, even subconsciously, that we’re safe and feed that level of confidence through the team.”

Some of the protocols involve extraordinary attention to detail, but that’s where the Merrion has always excelled, the details. You won’t find salt and pepper shakers sitting on the tables. They’re removed and sanitised before each sitting “We have systems back-of-house where kitchen staff must register hand washing every 30 minutes and it’s computer-controlled in addition to hand sanitisation in the dining room where they’re seen to do it.”

A tray that visits a diner’s table could be sanitised up to 16 times during a shift. “We insisted amongst ourselves that this must be done behind the scenes as much as possible, because we wanted to reopen as close to what we looked like when we closed.”

While the relaxed atmosphere in the lounge and a resurgence of interest in their newly renovated spa suggests the team is succeeding, the old analogy of a swan paddling furiously underwater is not without merit. MacCann follows one golden rule: “If you have to make cutbacks you must never do anything that impacts the customer,” he says before revealing this valuable lesson arose during his short tenure in Kenmare. “Sheen Falls is a beautiful hotel, but it struggled as a business in year one and there was a change in management and I got the job. I realised we needed to pair things back. When it came to Christmas there was a package in all the rooms that included a bottle of Baileys. I said forget the Baileys and leave the rest. Well, I got such grief over that bottle of Baileys. Someone even reminded me 15 years later, calling me the ‘fella who took away the bottle of Baileys out of Sheen Falls’.

“We have made enormous changes here [at the Merrion], but we have to maintain our level of service to what they were. For example the staff restaurant is a very expensive thing so unfortunately that had to go. The guest doesn’t know anything about that. Hours are reduced. Rosters are changed. We did a lot of cross training. A lot of the people here can work in five different departments, so the wage cost isn’t going up.”

An invisible outlook

The Drawing Rooms in the Merrion Hotel

While confident in his strategy, MacCann doesn’t sugar coat the outlook for the rest of the year. “We are going from a comfortable profit to a horrific loss, it’s as simple as that. The losses are going to run into next year. We forecast our business in great detail. At the moment I can’t predict what September is going to be like. I’ve no recollection of ever being in a situation like that, not even during 9/11 or the crash. Somebody said it’s like all those things rolled into one. It’s a guessing game and we’re all guessing in every industry.”

With staff more “like family” protecting them is a deep source of concern. Despite all the challenges and the potential of more to come, he’s thankful morale hasn’t been an issue. “When you work with likeminded people it’s not that hard because they all want to be here. The single most important thing in this business is recruitment.”

“If you look at the history of society, everything’s cyclical. So we’re going into a bust. The bust wasn’t created by finances it was created by disease.”

Still, there’s no escaping industry forecasts. A survey of 126 hotels, carried out by accountant and advisory firm Crowe, in partnership with the Irish Hotels Federation, has predicted an occupancy rate of 32 per cent for the year – down from the 2019 high of 73 per cent. MacCann is pragmatic about what this means for a five-star hotel in the heart of Dublin.

“Last year 44 per cent of our business was Irish. A lot of people don’t realise Ireland is its own biggest market. America was in the high 30s and the UK had dropped to about 11 per cent, predominantly driven by a fluctuation in the exchange rate prior to Brexit. Brexit exacerbated it, but didn’t cause it. Of that 44 per cent, quite a bit was corporate and at the moment, there is no volume of corporate planned for the remainder of 2020. All the big corporations and banks are working from home. People are amassing money and want to spend it.

“The business is out there, it wants to move, but it can’t until such time as the issue of access into the country is addressed, whether that’s the lifting of the quarantine in some form of tracking, tracing, checking of airports, etc. but that’s what’s impeding it at the moment. As much as I’d like to see it all lifted, I’m mindful of serious risks associated with it, so we need very intelligent people at the top making the decisions for us. I just hope they can make them sooner rather than later because this year is a write-off, that’s a given, but when you see major markets like America struggling at the moment, what’s that going to do for next year? That’s a hugely important market to Ireland.”

As for the potential of the domestic market, MacCann isn’t getting his hopes up. “The domestic market will be driven by leisure, which means it’s weekend business and I think that market will change when schools reopen in September. Fáilte Ireland have done a super job, they’ve launched a magnificent staycation programme and it’s really good, but it’s a small pond and there’s a lot of us fishing in it, and I think it’s going to get smaller. There’s difficult times ahead, no question.

As for new markets, the general manager remains despondent and quotes his friend and fellow hotelier, John Brennan. “He says ‘they used to talk about emerging markets 25 years ago, they’re still emerging’ and there’s a touch of that. Australia is an emerging market, etc. But we only ever invested in the markets that we knew were going to deliver. We spent all our money in America, the UK and here because that’s where our customers come from. No, we’ll revert to type on that, remain reliant on the big ones.”

Although he’s welcomed three US presidents, royalty, countless celebrities and valued guests over the years he’s not fooled by false ideals when it comes to luxury, particularly in a time of crisis. “It’s a sort of understated form of reassurance,” he says. “Yes it’s big fluffy pillows and the best linens, but they’re all things money can buy. A hotel is people. They’re the intangible element of luxury. They love serving, they love dealing with people. They want to do it to their best ability, that coupled with all the nice things you can buy and put into a space, that is luxury. That and a sense of place. There are hotels in the world that people rant and rave about them and I’ve been in them and I don’t like them. I find it often with chain properties, there’s no sense of place. I want to know where I am when I’m there. I don’t want it to feel like the same hotel I stayed in in Houston because I’m in Tokyo. Where am I? Thats a huge part of it. I think the other important bit is understated. Real luxury is not in your face. And sometimes people mix that up.”

Ultimately, it’s confidence in his product that keeps MacCann hopeful. “When we’ll be back to normal I have no idea, but we will be back. If you look at the history of society, everything’s cyclical. So we’re going into a bust. The bust wasn’t created by finances it was created by disease. Someone said to me it’s like a third world war, thankfully, we’re not seeing the mass destruction of a war, but we’ll recover. Of course we will. I’m just not sure when.”

Further reading on Ireland’s hotel industry:

“Business can be painful. You walk a tightrope, and it only takes one bullet. But I love it”

“There is no market except the domestic market” – how will Ireland’s hotels survive without foreign tourists?

Howard Hastings: “Would you like to go to a wedding where there were four people seated at a normal six-foot round table?”

Ireland’s first health farm has just been rejuvenated: “We want to bring Powerscourt Springs back to what it was and better”