Out on its own

Declan McCarthy, manager of Dublin's Towers Hotel, is never in his office. He can be found in reception welcoming new arrivals or in the private lounge talking with guests, and has even been known to drop guests at the airport.

He expects all his staff to follow suit. They are encouraged to talk to guests and deal personally, if possible, with any queries. This personal level of service has made the Towers, part of Jurys Hotel Group and adjoining Jurys Hotel in Dublin's Ballsbridge, the success it is. This year the hotel won the Egon Ronay's Jameson Guide 1996 Business Hotel of the Year award. Whatever a guest needs, the staff try to accommodate.

The service extends to car parking and luggage finding, too. If there isno parking space, that's the hotel's problem. If a guest's luggage is somewhere between New York and Dublin, it's also down to the hotel to sort it out. Guests check in and go to their rooms, and the staff do the rest. "What you get is hassle-free from beginning to end," says McCarthy.

New guests are greeted by one of the managers and personally escorted to their rooms. Every guest receives a phone call 15 minutes after arrival to check that everything is all right. But building the hotel up to providing this level of service has not been a smooth ride.

Jurys had an idea of what it wanted to achieve with the Towers when it opened in 1989 - a business hotel aimed at the five-star market - but initially it was unable to pull it off. The problem was that no one could distinguish the Towers from any other Jurys hotel. Check-in was in the adjoining Jurys and the two shared porters and housekeepers. "It was always part of the strategy for it to be a different product but people didn't get the idea," explains McCarthy.

Finally, a decision was taken to reposition the Towers, distancing it from the rest of the group. A strategy was devised to build up an identity for the Towers by giving it its own staff and entrance, and a separate marketing plan.

The restructuring lost momentum at the time of the Gulf war, when there was a slump in tourism and resources that had been committed to the Towers were reallocated elsewhere. So it wasn't until early 1994 that the hotel came back into the spotlight. A separate entrance was added and research was carried out into existing and potential customers. This helped Jurys focus attention on how to market the hotel.

At the same time, McCarthy was chosen to take over as manager. Jurys recognised that if it was going to create a special product, it would need a strong personality to back it up. "I was part of the development of the new strategy," he laughs.

McCarthy joined the Towers in April 1994, having spent 16 years with Aer Lingus as a senior cabin crew member, during which time he became involved in product development for the airline. He also spent two years at the Irish Management Institute, so the credentials and experience that McCarthy brought made him ideal for the job. And Jurys was looking for someone who worked in the guest service industry but not necessarily someone with traditional values.

On joining the hotel, McCarthy first set about restructuring the staff. It acquired extra personnel and now has its own waiters for the lounge area, three doormen and its own check-in and reception staff.

McCarthy felt that the staff should be a crucial part of the new structure. He wanted to create a team atmosphere, with everybody taking responsibility for their own areas so that, if the manager was away, the hotel would still run smoothly. "Everyone is a link in the chain, the eyes and ears of the establishment," he explains.

Service at the Towers is all about the team sharing information with each other. Full handover meetings are held between managers going on and off shifts, but this idea has caught on with other members of staff too. Porters have been known to ring each other after hours to compare notes on a guest.

Through personal touches such as this, the Towers has managed to build a repeat custom of 80%, and most of the guests are at chief executive level. The hotel works hard to get this type of custom and even harder to retain it. One of the tricks currently employed is to upgrade the adjoining Jurys' guests to the Towers if it is felt they would be more comfortable.

Once guests experience the service and make use of the facilities, they are hooked. Guests can make use of free saunas, all-day tea, coffee and biscuits served in the lounge, and a complimentary cocktail reception each evening from 6pm to 7pm.

With a £2m investment, and its new manager, entrance and full team of staff, the Towers has now acquired its own identity. Average occupancy runs at roughly 90%. So McCarthy has begun looking for room for improvement.

To keep everyone on their toes, he sets himself and the hotel a new goal every year. All efforts paid off this year and McCarthy's ambition was fulfilled when the hotel won the award of Egon Ronay's Jameson Guide 1996 Business Hotel of the Year. He already has ideas for the coming year, and is mulling over whether to try to retain the Business Hotel title or go on to bigger and better things by winning Hotel of the Year.

He accounts for the hotel's success with two things, the first being the personalised level of service. "It is crucial to stay in touch with guests," he says. The second is that the Towers is the only hotel in Dublin which has a private lounge exclusive to guests. This makes it a no-go area for the general public, and the Towers' guests seem to approve. "Clients who come in think it is their own," he says.

Add to this the fact that the room rates are no dearer than Dublin's existing five-star accommodation and that the Towers claims to have the biggest rooms in the capital, and Jurys seems to have hit on a formula for success.

The Towers formula is having a knock-on effect on the staff at its adjoining sister property. They are kept on their toes by what they see going on next door. "It encourages them to try harder," confirms Richard Bourke, general manager of Jurys Hotel and Towers, Ballsbridge.

In the long run, the Towers may also encourage Jurys Group to look at its older hotels with an upgrade in mind.