Cooking breakfast in his mother's guesthouse was one of young Peter Malone's chores. But even while day dreaming over the frying pan he could hardly have imagined that he would one day head an international hotel group.

Mr Malone puts great stock in practical experience and his own career has been, with a period of unemployment en route, an ascent from restaurant management to hotel management and on to being managing director of a public company.

When he started as general manger in Jurys, Cork - a position he held for nine years - his cooking skill came in useful one day. "The breakfast chef did not come into work and I was able to do breakfast, and it taught the staff there a lesson," he says.

He has announced his retirement from the top position in Jurys after nine years, but will remain in place for another 16 months. In that time, he will oversee the opening of two new hotels - Jurys Edinburgh Inn and Jurys Manchester Inn - and keep an eye on potential acquisitions in such cities as Birmingham, Newcastle and Coventry.

The group is also interested in expanding in northern Europe, into countries such as Belgium, Holland and Germany. Mr Malone also views Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland as new hunting grounds.

"People have finally copped on to our industry that it is a hugely diversified one.

"We are looked upon as a business now. Twenty years ago a hotel was a hotel but now we are a business," he says.

Mr Malone points to the chairman of Jurys, Mr Walter Beatty, as a key factor in the company's success. His understanding of property values, Mr Malone says, has contributed to the success of the group's acquisitions. Jurys Kensington Hotel in London was bought four years ago for less than £10 million. Similar hotels in the area cost more than £20 million now, he says.

Speed was critical in closing that deal. "We had our finances in very good shape and we were able to move quickly. . . The day we signed the deal four years ago, we were offered £1 million from an Arab consortium to walk away from it."

Many of the British acquisitions were hotels with "serious management problems", he says, and the group has relied on its management expertise and marketing and financial skills to make acquisitions.

A native of Dundalk, Mr Malone is the eldest of seven. His father, a pig dealer, died the same year he left school in 1963. He went to London for 2 1/2 years to do a restaurant management course and then trained at the Shannon Hotel School. As part of that experience, he worked in Grossingers Hotel in Sullivan County, in upstate New York, where he remembers watching the first moon landing on television.

He is now chairman of the interviewing panel at the Shannon college, a role which reminds him of how practical experience changes students' lives. "The year in Switzerland or Germany, they all tell me that is the year they changed from being schoolchildren to young adults. That is really when they have to dirty their hands."

In line with this thinking, he has spoken out against the "over-stressing" of third-level education.

"We must not take the eye off the apprenticeship ball. The job satisfaction and the pay at the end of the day in the craft area is as good as anything else," he says.

Jurys was floated in 1986 at a share price of 115p. At the time Investors Chronicle said it was a "share to watch and a worthy alternative to some over-priced UK hotel groups". The price is now more than 600p.

The company's pre-tax profits in the year ended April 30th, 1987, when the group had three hotels - Dublin, Cork and Limerick - were £1.6 million. This month, Davy stockbrokers predicts that profits on its nine hotels and six inns will be £17.5 million on a projected operating margin of 27 per cent, up from 15 per cent in 1993.

Mr Malone is a "rooms" man and has overseen the flourishing of the inns concept. He points to the relatively few overheads on a room for every £100 spent, compared with spending the same money in the bar. "It is a different cost base and that is where the secret is. But it is yield management also. It is making sure you get the right price for the room.

"It is all about rooms. That is the why inns have been such a great success."

But the inns, as economy hotels aimed at people "who are paying their own way", have not been imitated, and there are people, he says, who believe they are not profitable. "They query them, but I will tell you, they are wrong," he says.

He adds that if and when the downturn comes, there will be fall-outs in a market which has seen rapid hotel growth, much of it away from urban locations. "Where Jurys are concerned, we are confident that we are well spread. We are in the five-star, four-star and three-star markets."

He has just turned 54 and is 27 years married to Mary. "She has been my best friend. As managing director it has been lonely, and you need someone you can talk to."

His eldest daughter, Chanel, has followed him into the industry and has recently been appointed sales manager for Jurys Inns.

As a member of the National Minimum Wage Commission, he supports the £4.40 minimum wage recommendation made last week, although service industries are associated with low wages.

"I think the people in the industry who are good employers will not be disappointed with the minimum wage. I still feel it was the right decision," he says.

He describes "a confusion" between a minimum wage and a proper wage. "The black economy is the problem for not paying people properly. People are prepared to take £3 under the counter and employers are prepared to pay that.

"The black economy does not help people who are playing the system properly, people who are good employers."

He takes five-mile walks most days which take him 65 minutes, relying on them for therapeutic and inspirational effect. "I come up with great ideas and the guys say, `you were walking again last night'. If I do not do it for a couple of days, I get annoyed with myself." His other passion is his racehorse, Nordic Thorn, with which he has had "some luck".

In another world, he would like to run a top division soccer team as a business manager. "I like the strategy. I love planning. I love going forward and then achieving the target," he says.

Mr Malone is an enthusiastic believer in delegating authority. He recalls a conference in UCD where he addressed 150 assistant managers. One manager stood up and said he was not being given authority. "I would hate that to be our company because I like them to breathe and by God, they will too.

"I encourage them to think for themselves. The person who never comes up with an idea - I get cross with them because they are just coasting."

Looking back over the nine years as managing director, he says that the first four were groundwork years but difficult in MD terms because of the recession and declining US visitor numbers.

"It made us not become complacent. We were lean and we went into the bad years lean and it is my policy to keep being lean."