Smoke on the water

on the Irish smoking ban

The Irish smoking ban has been a great success. Pubs are as busy as ever and trade is hardly affected. People wanting to smoke are happy to stand outside and instead of smoke, the pubs smell of...

Bullshit


The Irish smoking ban has been a total disaster. The few pubs that haven't closed have seen trade drop by as much as 60% and are suffering real hardship so...

Which is correct

Well...

It seeems to depend on where you are and who you listen to.

It's true that pubs in major citites are still busy. We haven't been to Ireland since the ban was introduced, so we don't have first hand experience of the situation. The two points of view above are approximations of the Scottish Executive's opinion and the Scottish Licensed Trade Association.

I've heard that in rural areas, the pubs have closed and people simply have a party at someone's barn each weekend. The drink's cheaper (you can buy it cheaper in your local supermarket than I can) and you can smoke.

So what's going to happen here?

Well, first of all the pub trade is in decline anyway. Our Saturday customers are folk whose average age is 60 who have been coming here for decades. There's no one to replace them.
But we're not a pub. We're a hotel with a public bar (and two other bars) and this helps.

A lot

After our renovations we will have as many as 13 rooms. Even assuming 50% occupancy that gives a decent income without any bar trade and for considerably less work. Food is profitable too, as long as kitchen management is good.

And it's worth noting that paying guests will also use the bar. Sometimes so much so that the bar tab is more than the cost of the room.

On a totally unrelated note, We see that the Colquhonnie Hotel in Strathdon is for sale. It was for sale 8 months ago when we were looking for a place. The owners (John and Sally) were nice folk who apparently still live in the village. I don't know what happened, but the new owners seem to have lasted the winter and no more.

A lot of people think "I'm fed up of the 9 to 5, let's buy a hotel" You see them on these silly lifestyle tv programmes that I used to transmit in a previous incarnation as a (rather unsuccessful) tv engineer. They then buy a hotel and realise that it's now 7.45 to 00.30 and you DON'T get a day off.

A lot of hotels get sold after a year.

Think about that if you're considering it. We both worked silly hours in previous jobs, so it wasn't much of a change. Do you want to be able to attend family parties? Do you want to have an evening out? You won't be able to for the first 3 years anyway. I missed my cousin's wedding a couple of weeks ago because it was on a Saturday night and there was no way we could get staff to cover.

We have been here for 8 months now. We're just getting to grips with it and survived our first major function (a double 18th) without any major mishap. We're also heading into the busiest season and that's going to be an interesting learning experience.

Again, for people thinking of doing this - If you have no experience then look to take over the place in winter (unless you're in a ski resort of course) because you'll have the quiet period to learn the business and people and by the time it gets busy you MIGHT have just got a clue about what you're doing.

We'll see. Stay tuned for further developments.