The Hotel People series will follow the team at Northern Ireland’s largest family owned luxury hotel chain, which reopened its doors in May 2021 following the pandemic. The group suffered more than £16.5 million of losses during the crisis, and in the series viewers will see how the team find inventive ways to bring back business.
The series also documents the team’s numerous challenges. Managers are faced with staff shortages and a lack of overseas visitors means they must drive business from the local market.
Each episode will follow staff at all levels in four of the group’s hotels, as they pull together to navigate a new post-Covid version of hospitality. From the housekeepers trying to keep hundreds of rooms spotless while tackling bogus bedbug claims, to chefs delivering high-end banquets for hundreds, while mending wobbly wedding cakes to keep a big day special.
Viewers will watch the general managers as they welcome everyone from premiership footballers and A-list actors to boxers and beauty queens across the group’s four hotels.
The Europa Hotel in Belfast city centre is celebrating 50 years of business, and shares the city with the group’s newest hotel – The Grand Central Hotel Belfast. After a build cost of £53 million it opened in 2017 as the most expensive hotel ever to be built in Northern Ireland.
On the outskirts of Belfast, the Culloden Estate and Spa attracts A-list celebrities, premiership footballers and grand events. Weddings account for 35% of its revenue, and with a backlog of postponed and rescheduled weddings and events in the diary, the team is geared up for a bumper year.
Down the coast, in the seaside town of Newcastle, is the Slieve Donard Resort and Spa.
The Hotel People starts on 22 August on BBC One Northern Ireland at 10.40pm and on 23 August on BBC Two at 8pm and will be available on BBC iPlayer.
