John Ryan, the owner of the Pembroke hotel in Kilkenny, delivers a great guide on how to start and run a boutique hotel.
In 2009, businessman and quantity surveyor, John Ryan took back the reins of his hotel property, the Pembroke Kilkenny, located in the heart of the medieval city of Kilkenny. In the midst of the recession and using an innovative style of management, he outlines how he has helped transform the property into one of the leading boutique hotels in the South East of Ireland.
How are you different?
Boutique doesn’t necessarily mean small, but it is a niche in many respects. It’s somewhere you should find a superior standard of service, where the personal touch and customer service are pronounced and quite tangible. The Pembroke is a hotel that listens intently to its customers, because really listening to feedback, whether positive or negative, provides excellent learning and insight.
“I decided to take back direct control of the hotel.”
Building the hotel
The property had been a garage-site, formerly known as Stakelums, which had been vacant for many years – and I could see that the location had significant potential for a quality hotel from the first-hand experience, project-managing a large number of hotels across the country. In 2004, I was fortunate to end up buying the property, and the Pembroke Kilkenny now stands on the site where the Stakelums garage used to be located.
At that stage, as managing partner, I was heavily involved in professional services within the Nolan Ryan Partnership, one of the leading practices in the country, which we went on to sell in 2005. During this period, I built the hotel and leased it out to a hotel operator. In 2009, during the early stages of the recession, I decided to take back direct control of the hotel because of market
