The £17 million flagship project being developed by the Fitzwilliam Hotel Group a 135-bedroom five star hotel in on Dublin's St Stephen's Green will will cater for the under-serviced luxury trade, the group chief executive, Mr Michael Holland, said this week. The Fitzwilliam Hotel, expected to be open by the beginning of June, is being built at an average room cost of £126,000.
Mr Holland said it will be aimed at young international business customers and predicted it would make an annual pre-tax profit of £1.7 million on a turnover of £5.5 million, paying back its original investment in ten years.
Rooms will cost between £175 and £400 per night. The average room cost for a Dublin deluxe hotel is £147, according to an American Express survey last October.
The Fitzwilliam Group was founded ten years ago by Mr Holland and Mr Brendan Gilmore, who both worked at Bastow Charlton accountants in the late 1970s. As business partners, they took over the Country Club Hotel in Portmarnock, Dublin, in 1988, renaming it the Portmarnock Hotel and Golf Links. They acquired the Royal Dublin Hotel in 1989 and the Metropole in Cork in 1991, building the Leeside Leisure Centre alongside it three years later.
Mr Gilmore is also the chairman of the mining and exploration company, Arcon.
The Fitzwilliam Hotel was bought as a site with a shell from British Land, owners of the St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, for £6 million, Mr Holland said. The hotel has been designed by Sir Terence Conran's company, CD Partnership, for £2.5 million and is being built alongside the shopping centre. It will incorporate Mr Conrad Gallagher's Peacock Alley restaurant which will move from its present location on South William Street. Asked about possible over-capacity developing in the hotel industry, Mr Holland maintained that Dublin was poorly catered for in the luxury hotel sector, with about 920 bedrooms in the city centre including the Shelbourne, the Westbury, the Conrad, the Merrion and the Fitzwilliam hotels. In the context of market growth and the economy's buoyancy, supply was not exceeding the demand, he said.
About half the trade would come from Britain, with the remainder divided equally between the rest of Europe and the US, he predicted.
The hotel design combines large light-catching windows with themed castle features. The building will have a pink granite frontage and a reception incorporating Barcelona Limestone, black and white marble flooring, and American walnut wood furniture and fittings.
Other features include a pewter bar counter, a glass footbridge and the largest roof garden in Britain and Ireland, being designed by the Chelsea Flower Show award winner, Mr Diarmuid Gavin. The rooms will offer views of either St Stephen's Green or the roof garden, which will have a glass "tool shed" as a central feature. Staff uniforms will come from the drawing boards of Irish designers Mr Cuan Hanly and Mr Marc O'Neill. The hotel will also have a 70-space underground car-park.
