Welcome from Our Chief Executive, Michael Kearney
As Chief Executive of Carlton Hotel Group, I'd like to welcome you to the Carlton Hotel Group blog. The Carlton Hotel Group was established in 2004 and since then has developed as one of the premier Hotel Groups in Ireland. In the past 7 years Carlton has grown substantially from operating one hotel to having a presence in many locations throughout Ireland.
Through this blog it is my aim to give you an insight into what's going on in all of our hotels plus my opinions on current affairs, sports news, general activities and events. I will also occassionally invite some of my colleagues to write on the blog giving you more opinions and insights into what's going on at Carlton. If you have any questions or queries on any of the posts please leave a comment and I will respond at my earliest convenience. Enjoy reading.............
Posted: 2010-10-13 17:00:00
I’ve been based in Dublin Airport this week as I had a few meetings in the area but I hope to head over to Limerick tomorrow evening to the Carlton Castletroy Park Hotel, where Kevin Dundon will be doing a cooking demonstration.Kevin Dundon is a well known celebrity chef and proprietor of the award winning Dunbrody House. Tomorrow night will give the people of Limerick the opportunity to experience Kevin’s most popular dishes plus learn some tips along the way. I must admit that I’m more a fan of what the cooking produces then actually doing it but I am looking forward to hopefully meeting Kevin and seeing what he does on the night. If you happen to be in the area then call into the hotel at 8pm as I know they still have some tickets available. If the cooking de ...
Posted: 2010-10-12 11:00:00
On this week’s show the Apprentice candidates took part in another direct sales task, this time for Ryobi tools. It was a straightforward task whereby the two teams had to set up a stand in Woodies and sell the tools, plus record a slot with Alan Hughes for Ireland AM.Fusion decided on Kieran to be their project manager quite quickly but I don’t think David was too happy to be chosen as project manager for Elev8. It seemed that he was chosen by his team purely because he didn’t seem to want it, an unusual strategy but it worked for them in the end. The candidate that stood out the most in this task was definitely Niamh McDonald, who doesn’t have a sales background but performed extremely well in the task.As always there was some drama during the task, this ...
Posted: 2010-10-08 17:00:00
I’ve had another very busy week this week splitting my time between Dublin and Ballinsloe for the events at the October Fair. There has been a lot happening this week and the Rose of Tralee Clare even made an appearance in Ballinasloe at the Carlton Shearwater’s Fashion Show on Wednesday night.This weekend I hope to make it to the Kinsale Gourmet Festival as it always proves to be a great weekend with plenty to do around the town. Kinsale is known for being the ‘Gourmet Capital’ of Ireland and this festival definitely shows some of the reasons for this title. Saturday is sure to be the highlight of the festival with an escourted tour of the eleven members of the Kinsale Good Food Circle. All the members will present dishes from their kitchens bearing testi ...
Posted: 2010-10-05 12:00:00
The task for this week’s Apprentice on TV3 was set by Lucozade to promote their new ‘Lucozade Sport Lite’ drink. The task was a marketing task whereby each team had to create a marketing campaign for the new drink with a billboard ad and slogan. Bill mixed the two teams up and added an extra twist by selecting the project managers for the task himself. He chose Caroline for team Fusion and Panos for team Elev8 as he felt both candidates had fallen under the radar for the previous two tasks. In my opinion neither of the two billboards produced were very innovative and Fusion’s made no sense with the camel in the picture. However, I do think they thought outside the box a bit more than Elev8 but ultimately it didn’t work for the client. Elev8 chose a l ...
Posted: 2010-10-04 12:30:00
Following a busy week in Dublin I travelled to Westport on Thursday afternoon to attend the official launch of Fishworks Café Bar at the Carlton Atlantic Coast Hotel. On arrival I met the team, all brimming with excitement ahead of the big night they had planned. It didn’t disappoint, with Bibi Baskin as MC on the night entertaining the crowd at every opportunity.There were plenty of things going on around the hotel throughout the evening and it was great to see everyone taking part. The lobby was full of people receiving complimentary hand massages from the new Ayurvedic therapists while everyone else was in Fishworks trying complimentary tasters of their new menu. I didn’t partake in the massage myself as I was too busy trying all the fresh fish on offer in F ...
Posted: 2010-10-01 14:00:00
As you know I was asked to judge the Queen of the Fair in Ballinasloe last week and I must say I had a great time doing it. It was brilliant to get the chance to reprise my role as a judge following my experience on this year’s Rose of Tralee. For this judging role I was joined by Michael Fitzsimons from Failte Ireland, Cathleen Croffy from the Fair committee and former queen of the fair Elaine White. Although all of the applicants were excellent, I and my fellow judges all agreed to crown Hannah Kelly as the Queen of the Fair 2010. As one of the oldest festivals in Ireland, I’m sure Hannah will have a busy week ahead of her as queen of the Ballinasloe October Fair. The fair starts this Saturday morning and runs until Sunday 10th of October with plenty of events ...
Posted: 2010-09-28 11:30:00
Along with the majority of the population I tuned in to TV3 to watch the Apprentice last night and the show as always didn’t disappoint! Last night saw Unislim and Today FM come together to set this week’s task for the candidates. The objective of the task was to create a menu using the Unislim guidelines and then create a radio ad on Today FM to market the Unislim plan. I thought the task itself wasn’t too difficult and with a little bit of planning the teams should do very well in it. I couldn’t have been more wrong!Although the girl’s team did win the task it was definitely a case of the lesser of the two evils as neither team really deserved to win. What let the girls down was their menu as it was not innovative enough and was not presented well. ...
