James McGinn - General Manager of the Europa Hotel, Belfast
I LIVE IN Belmont in Belfast, a 10-minute drive from the hotel. Normally I’m in for 8.30am, but it depends on what’s going on.
I’ve spent this morning working in advance of a strategy meeting with the Hotels Federation, which I’m just about to go in to. The hotel sector in the city centre here is definitely suffering from an oversupply of rooms in the corporate market, but the weekend leisure market is brisk.
The biggest event here in recent weeks was the MTV music awards, for which MTV took over four full floors and remodelled them, creating their own bars, nightclubs and restaurants. It was amazing.
The negotiations had gone on for quite some time beforehand, but once the crew arrived the level of professionalism was astounding. It was really impressive to watch.
We had Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez and Katy Perry visit, but for me the biggest stars were our staff. From the front door to the back they were just amazing. They knew how important it was for the city to get everything right and they pulled out all the stops. I was really proud of them.
To be honest, I was a bit frightened for the other guests who were booked in. We were trying to explain that there was a real party going on that night and were handing out earplugs, but there was no problem at all. The atmosphere in the hotel was electric.
After I finish with the Hotels Federation meeting, I’ll have lunch at my desk and then it’s straight into a yield meeting with the rooms division, front office and the events team.
We do our forecasting every seven days and then a big one every three months, looking for opportunities to build revenues, looking at our market share and watching what our competitors are doing.
The biggest trend we are seeing at the moment is the rise in demand for afternoon tea. It’s driven by ladies of all ages and it’s hugely popular. We’re about to introduce a special one for Christmas with mulled wine.
At the moment it’s budget time. I’ve to finish up our budgeting by the end of December. Tomorrow I’m going into head office and to meet Hastings group revenue officials. They’ll have their figures, we’ll have our figures and we’ll negotiate.
We have six properties in the Hastings group and I was previously manager of the Stormont and the Culloden, and have been here at the Europa for eight years, so it’s probably time for a move.
Normally I’ll finish up at around 7pm. If I don’t fancy going home and staring at the four walls, I’ll head over to the Culloden for a workout, a swim or maybe some treatments. I’ve even been known to Zumba (a fitness dance).
In conversation with
SANDRA O'CONNELL