From City Hotels to a Community-Focused Role in the Keadeen Hotel
Michael Masterson is General Manager of the Keadeen Hotel in Newbridge since September 2024. Having come from a background of hospitality management of various properties in city locations, this posting represents a very different set of challenges, where integration with the community is a vital pillar to survive and thrive. It’s an attitude that comes naturally to a Kildare native as he.
In his hospitality career, Michael considers himself fortunate to have gone through the ups and downs associated with the boom years, the recession and the Covid Lockdown periods.
“There was a lot that happened during that stretch of 6-7 years,” he says. “I learned a lot really quickly – more than anyone would have who started either a couple of years before that or a couple of years after that time.”
A Career Path Spanning Boutique, Corporate, and Michelin-Star Settings
His career has seen him begin in his native county in family-owned properties and through the large-scale corporate world. His impressive CV includes stints at the Osprey hotel in Naas (where he was Food Services Manager) the Finnstown Country Hotel in Lucan (where he was Duty Manager and where he had his first experience of a major hotel renovation), the Cliff at Lyons (his first experience of a Michelin-star restaurant where Jordan Bailey was chef) and with the Tifco Hotel Group at the Crowne Plaza/ Holiday Inn Express in Santry and the Crowne Plaza Blanchardstown, where he arrived as General Manager.
“I arrived in Blanchardstown at a really interesting time,” says Michael. “There were big renovations… we renovated from the 9 th floor all the way down to the 3 rd and then into the ground floor – the reception and bar… it was very different to everything I had done before and a very corporate market.”
The Keadeen Hotel Role Came at the Right Time
Like so many others in the post-Lockdown world, Michael began to take stock and felt that he wanted to get away from the corporate side of hospitality and back towards something more suited to his own instincts and experience.
“That is how I ended up here,” he says. “I wasn’t really looking at the time – I wasn’t really planning to move. Because I’m from the area, I knew that there was talk of selling the Keadeen Hotel but there had been such talk circulating for years.”
All of a sudden, however, the hotel was sold and within a week of learning about the sale, Michael had gone through the interview process and was appointed General Manager. “I was a bit shell-shocked by the decision – it wasn’t something I was looking for but I then started to think about using so many of the things I had learned along the way. Also, I knew the people and knew some of the staff.”
Maintaining a Unique Identity Under Group Hotel Management
The hotel is owned by Matthew O’Callaghan, who also own the Fairways Hotel and the Gateway Hotel in Dundalk. Like those hotels, the Keadeen is a managed property by Cliste Hospitality Consultancy – the management consultancy arm of iNua.
“I know that it’s an unusual way of doing things,” says Michael, “but what I would say is that what we can achieve with Cliste – certainly in terms of sales, marketing, finance, health & safety – is a lot easier to do with 16 hotels than it is with 3. There’s a lot of advantage in having that.
“I would be very protective of the Keadeen name and reputation and that it doesn’t fall into a group brand. It is unique and it will always be unique and will always travel its own path.
“To help maintain the link with the people here and to maintain the hotel’s reputation, we’ve had a few big events for the local community, like the ‘Oscars Night’ with the local GAA Club, which would have been one of the biggest events that the Keadeen has ever done.”
There is, of course, a fine line to maintaining the individual character of a hotel under a group management structure and Michael readily admits that he has had his conversations around the subject, but the story so far has proven that the Keadeen has retained its individuality under this arrangement.
“The Keadeen’s legacy and why it does things so well and has this reputation is down to the lady that came before me (Rose O’Loughlin), who was running the hotel for 54 years.
“She was very selective about who she was going to sell the hotel to, and was very happy when Matthew came along and expressed the same values that she had. And when it came to hiring, they found those same values with me; that it wouldn’t become just another hotel.
“Cliste run a lot of unique hotels. It’s not ‘one brand fits all’ with them. Yes, they have a number of Radisson Hotels and they have their own brand standards, but they do have a lot of hotels that are all very unique and individual. “The expertise on marketing, sales and finance; we couldn’t pay for that resource on our own… for individual hotels out there, working with Cliste certainly makes sense because you get to keep your own identity.”
Blending Tradition with Modern Systems at the Keadeen
At the Keadeen, they go to efforts to bring some of the past history of the hotel to life, with touches such as sharing with wedding clients the menus from weddings from the 1970s and 80s. The hotel will be keeping and restoring the unique hand-selected furniture and fittings in the hotel, for example, maintaining the property’s charm and ambiance. At the same time, there’s no holding back when it comes to modernising many aspects of how the hotel is run.
One of the first changes was upgrading to Alchemy software to modernise the payroll system, which had still been on paper.
“Everything we’ve done in terms of modernisation is with our systems. It doesn’t affect the guest’s experience, except to make it easier for them,” says Michael. “This is back-of- house stuff that gives managers more time to spend with guests and interact with them.
That’s my focus – if I’m upgrading a system, I always ask the question, ‘how long is a person going to have to sit in front of a computer to do this?’ or ‘is it going to save him time?’
” Several renovation works have already been carried out throughout the hotel, including the gym, gym equipment and pool deck area, as well as the tills and the door lock system. “I’m really happy with how the first six months have gone,” says Michael, who adds that they are currently renovating the property’s 69 rooms at rate of six every two weeks. Apart from
one member of kitchen staff who retired, he has managed to retain all the original staff.
Overall, he says, working hand-in-hand with Cliste is a flexible arrangement and one that is made easier by the fact that the man at the head of the company Seán O’Driscoll is a hotel manager himself, rather than a management consultancy with little or no direct hotel management experience.
From Michael’s point of view, the independent family-style hotel is the cornerstone of true hospitality and one to which a growing number of individual clients return. So, with the Keadeen moving from the O’Loughlin Family to the O’Callaghan family means that family style independent hotel with the essence of true Irish hospitality lives on.
