Helen’s Heritage as GM Comes Home to Roost
They say that first impressions count and this is something that’s just as true for a career choice as it is for interpersonal relationships.
At least, that is what Helen Skehill – GM of The Heritage in Co. Laois – found in her career. After opting for a career in hotel management, she encountered hotel experience for the first time in her life during her work experience stint when she was 19 years old.
It was in Kerry and the rain was falling heavily as she was brought from Killarney Train Station by car to the staff accommodation of the Park Hotel in Kenmare.
It wasn’t until the next morning that she was actually introduced to the hotel itself and its owners, Francis and John Brennan. And while her arrival might have felt a bit lonely, cold and damp, the welcome that she received the following morning was the complete opposite:
“Initially, I thought it was going to be horrendous,” says Helen, “The weather was awful and I thought the car was going to fall off the side of the mountain… But it turned out to be the best time ever.
“The next morning, I was in just in awe of the place. Everything was clean and immaculate – so crisp. Everyone looked the part and everything was about the guest.
“You worked hard but you played hard too. There was a great social aspect to the experience. And if someone in your family was coming down, they’d bring them in to see the place, so it was really nice the way they deal with staff… Also, we had to work over the Millenium and for those who did, we were rewarded with a free trip to Las Vegas in January!”
Helen’s background in her native Meath had nothing to do with the hotel business. Her father was a fireman and her mother worked in the Credit Union in Dunboyne.
Although there was little support from teachers in school for her interest in the hotel and catering sector, Helen was always drawn towards it.
“I don’t know where the hotel thing came from,” says Helen, “but I always wanted to get into hotels; I loved serving people and looking after people.”
Once her course in Hotel Management at GMIT in Galway was completed, Helen went to work at The Pond Hotel in Glasgow. After her experience in a five-star establishment, it was a big change to work in a busy three-star city hotel.
“That was at totally different experience,” recalls Helen, “but I would have worked in every area there, so the experience I gained was huge.”
She brought that experience back to Ireland for a short stint as receptionist at the Ardilaun Hotel in Galway, before moving back to the UK – this time to London, to the Royal Overseas League. It’s a private members’ club for the British Royal Family, just behind the Ritz-Carlton. After a year and a half there, Helen came back to Ireland to work with the now-defunct Mercer Group in the reservations department.
“It was great, in a way,” says Helen, “because you learn so much… there were a lot of issues and challenges. The group was owned by McNamara Builders, so it was a building company and was run by his wife and sister-in-law. They were nurses – not hoteliers – so it was very busy navigating through it all; finding out what was going on.”
Helen remained working with the group for seven years. She moved up to being head of group reservations within a year of starting. At that time in the early 2000s, the group was expanding rapidly, taking on a lot of new properties around the country.
“Any time that we took over a new hotel, it was I who went in first. So, I got very good at talking to people… you needed to go in and look at their system and see what needed to be changed for it all to comply with your own systems, but you needed to do that quickly and in a polite way.”
Mercer became a victim of the recession and Helen consequently lost her job in 2010. Working for Mercer had been difficult, she admits, but she did love her job and relished the challenges it produced on a regular basis.
Her next role was as Operations Manager with tour operator Dark Rome (now City Wonders). It gave her a break from visiting hotels and gave Helen another slant on the leisure management sector. However, it was all office-based and after giving the position two years, she found that she missed the direct contact with the public and of being ‘out in the field’.
She became Events and Front Office Manager at the Westgrove Hotel in Clane, County Meath; a role she worked in for five years.
“Jerry Russel was the GM when I started and I would have known him from the Montrose Hotel (formerly of the Mercer Group)… The role was very wedding-driven and revenue-driven and a little bit of everything.”
After working for the Clayton Group at their hotel in Liffey Valley, Helen’s next move was to the Clayton in Ballsbridge, where she worked as Revenue Manager.
The advent of Covid gave her a wide variety of unexpected tasks such as gardening and painting and the varied and hands-on experience reminded Helen of her original hospitality-industry ambitions: that of becoming a General Manager.
When business returned to normal, Helen took a step towards GM by becoming Deputy General Manager. Just recently The Heritage came calling and appointed her General Manager for the first time in her 25-year career.
It was, she says, a very easy decision to come here. The ethos of the establishment was very much in line with her own philosophy and staff are well looked after and respected – as evidenced by the fact that many of the staff have been working there since the beginning.
“It’s very much like a family,” says Helen of the hospitality sector in general. “People forget that sometimes, but it’s very much so a family sort of area… seeing people progress and seeing staff know that they can trust you and that you’ll help them if something happens. That is huge.”
The current level of investment in The Heritage, she says, is very significant, with a lot of refurbishments being carried out in different sections on an ongoing basis. They are also mindful of getting a positive and welcoming message out to the local community. They had a ‘local evening’ to get local people using the property and spread the word.
“The locality are the lifeblood of the place, and a great number of our staff live around here. It’s a huge asset for the local people to have this hotel here and it’s a huge asset for us to have so many people living close by.”
Her first experience of meeting the famous Brennan brothers in Kenmare when she was 19 years old is something that has stood to her, she says, underlining the importance once again of a warm welcome into the industry for those starting off in it:
“Being nice to people doesn’t cost you anything… I love what I do. It’s hard and it can be stressful and it can be lots of other difficult things, but I adore what I do.”
