A total of 608 people will lose their jobs this weekend when two well-known Dublin hotels do business for the last time.
Jurys Hotel/Towers and the Berkeley Court will close at about lunchtime on Monday, as the last guests check out after breakfast.
Jurys/Towers employs 376 people, while the Berkeley Court has a staff of 232. They have accepted a redundancy deal.
The sites of the hotels, in Ballsbridge, were bought by developer Seán Dunne's Mountbrook Homes from the Jurys Doyle chain in 2005.
Both hotels are booked out, at the usual summer rates, this weekend, with some of the guests in Dublin for the horse show. Some have been regular guests over the years and will share the emotion of staff when the hotels finally close on Monday.
The two landmark hotels have colourful histories. Located in the embassy belt, they were frequented over the years by celebrities and politicians.
They were venues for conferences, lunches and press receptions, becoming part of the fabric of the city's business and social life. Jurys can trace its history back to 1839, when William Jury opened his first "commercial lodgings" at 7 College Green. In 1972, the company bought three hotels from the Intercontinental group, and Jurys in Ballsbridge became the flagship hotel of the new group.
The legendary Jurys cabaret became hugely popular with tourists. Celebrity guests who stayed at the four-star, 400-room hotel over the years included Yasser Arafat, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack Charlton.
Its coffee dock, which served late-night meals, was popular with guests and visitors as a meeting place, not least for the many politicians who frequented the hotel over the years.
Many TDs stayed there, and there were frequent late-night discussions about the state of political play. Some of the Fianna Fáil backbenchers, plotting Charles Haughey's campaign for the party leadership in 1979, met in the coffee dock to discuss tactics.
The five-star Berkeley Court, with 186 rooms, was built in 1978 by the well-known hotelier PV Doyle on part of the original botanical gardens of Trinity College. It, too, became a venue for celebrities and politicians. As taoiseach, Charles Haughey lunched there, while his successor, Albert Reynolds, used the hotel for critical secret meetings relating to the Northern peace process.
Meanwhile, those seeking a souvenir, or with a keen eye for hotel furniture, will be able to make a purchase when the entire contents of Jurys goes up for auction next Friday. There will be viewing of the 2,300 lots available in the hotel on Wednesday and Thursday. The furnishings and contents of the coffee dock will be among the offerings.
