On Monday, in the lobby of his 92-room Fitzpatrick Manhattan hotel on New York's Lexington Avenue, John Fitzpatrick bumped into a couple from Dublin that he knows well. Ciarán Hancock, Business Affairs Correspondent, reports.

"I asked them if they were over for the shopping?" he explained. "He said, 'she's over for the shopping but I'm here to buy a couple of buildings'. Irish people just seem to have plenty of money and they're spending a lot of it here, very quietly."

These are boom times for Fitzpatrick's two hotels in the Big Apple, helped by the hordes of Irish flying in to take advantage of the weak dollar.

"The Irish are coming here as if they're just going next door, and it's all year round now, too."

Just this week, the Manhattan hotel played host to Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley and his deputy Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin. "They told me they had a fantastic stay," he says.

Visitors from Ireland account for about 30 per cent of Fitzpatrick's business.

Fitzpatrick (47) plays the Irish card, but there are no plastic shamrocks or any of the paddywhackery that you find in Manhattan's slew of so-called Irish bars.

"We are always proud to be Irish but we are modern-day Irish," he says.

This has fed through to Fitzpatrick's bottom line. His average occupancy is a healthy 85 per cent and the company's operating profit rose by 32 per cent in the year to the end of September to $7.3 million.

It has had four consecutive years of double-digit revenue growth after a couple of lean years post-9/11. Such is Fitzpatrick's confidence that a $7 million refurbishment of his Manhattan hotel will be completed early in the new year.

This is one of the busiest times of the year for Fitzpatrick with some rooms selling for up to $700 a night. It would be the envy of many a hotelier in Celtic Tiger Ireland.

New York is booming at present, particularly the hotel sector where the number of rooms has dropped by about 2,500 in recent years.

"A lot of people converted their hotels into condos because three or four years ago condos were scarce," he explains. "It's just where the property market was at."

Fitzpatrick says a lot of people tried to persuade him to take the same route but he stuck to his guns. The hotel business is in his blood.

Fitzpatrick is in the fortunate position of owning his two properties - the Manhattan and the Grand Central - in prime locations of the city. He also manages the Fitzpatrick East 55th Street Hotel for another group. It was previously owned by BA and is used on stopovers by the airline's crew.

In July, Fitzpatrick took full control of the American business, buying out his siblings for an undisclosed sum.

His brothers Patrick, Paul and Tony and sister Eithne owned half of the business between them. Under a deal hammered out in 2001 at the behest of their father Paddy, the family agreed a mechanism for buying each other out of the hotel business after his passing.

"We have to thank him [ Paddy] for the way he set up the buyout," Fitzpatrick said. "Thank God there's been no problem with it and there were no lawyers involved."

Paddy passed away in 2002 but his children continue to forge ahead in the hotel trade.

In 2006, John sold his interest in the Fitzpatrick Castle hotel in Killiney to his sister Eithne, who now controls that business.

His brother Paul runs the Morgan and Beacon hotels in Dublin that are featured on Fitzpatrick's website. "We work together to promote the properties," he says. "It works quite well."

He estimates that his two hotels in New York are currently worth an eye-watering $180 million. They cost about €24 million to buy in the early 1990s.

Looking to the future, Fitzpatrick is itching to expand his hotel interests in the US. "Now that I'm on my own I can decide where I want the business to go," he says. "I'd like to do another Fitzpatrick hotel and I'd like to do Washington and Boston."

He is also considering managing hotels for other owners, possibly even using other brands, like the Marriott, Hilton or Starwood.

"We're looking at doing asset management for other hotels and possibly not with the Fitzpatrick brand," he says. "People have said to us that we should look at Florida or the west coast and we would if the right opportunity came along."

Fitzpatrick has not ruled out taking a partner on board to help fund his expansion ambitions and says there have been plenty of approaches.

He previously worked with venture capital firms NCB and ACT when getting the New York hotels off the ground.

"I've worked with [ external] investors before but I'd be inclined not to work with venture capital again, as their [ investment] horizon tends to be quite short. I might just go it alone.

"I've got two properties on freehold that are worth a lot of money and have very little debt. I'm just waiting for the right time to move."