Investment marks high hopes for Balmoral’s future

The Balmoral has been a constant of the hospitality scene in Warrenpoint for many decades, but following a recent investment by its owners, it has never looked so well…

Warrenpoint hotel, The Balmoral, which has been in the ownership of the Boylan family since the 1970s, re-opened at the end of September following a major refurbishment.

The popular three-storey venue, which began life many years ago as a cinema, has been extensively re-developed on the ground floor. Owner, Neil Boylan and his business partner, Michael McQuillan, have added a new 80-seater bistro called The Anchor, to the offering and refurbished The Bal, a small bar on the ground floor of the premises which used to be home to a pool room.

The exterior of the hotel has also been completely re-decorated and the front doors have been glassed, allowing additional light to flood into the lobby, where an eye-catching aquarium has also now been installed.

“We’ve introduced a massive change to the hotel and we’ve already seen a marked uplift in business with people coming in to eat in the bistro,” Neil told LCN this month. “Customers are absolutely mesmerised with the new-look that we’ve created. They’ve told us that they just wouldn’t know it from the way it was before.”

The Balmoral became the Boylan family’s business back in 1978, when Neil’s father, Raymond, took on an old bar on Seaview. Raymond had owned The Yankee Bar on Duke Street in Warrenpoint – now known as the Duke of Mourne – which he bought in 1972 for £87,000, but he sold that venue in order to raise funds for the purchase of the Balmoral.

Once Raymond had possession of the bar, he got to work transforming some of its ample interior space into a function room and kitchens, eventually opening for business again in November, 1978.

“I think that my father really had vision when he made those changes,” says Neill, who was involved in the family business with his brother, Gary, since they were children. “Weddings and dinner dances were massive at that time and we had the main function room in the area, so we were soon doing 20 weddings a year and maybe 80 other functions as well.”

The venue was developed on and off throughout the 1980’s, including an extension of the function room which increased its capacity to around 230, although Raymond never added accommodation to the offering.

That fell to Neill and Gary, who took over most of the running of the business in 2006 and almost immediately added nine bedrooms to The Balmoral. They also opened a small eatery – Restaurant 23 – on the second level and re-opened the venue as a small hotel.

“It did really well for us from the start, but the problem was that the recession began to kick in from 2007,” recalled Neill. “We had planned to put another eight bedrooms on at that stage and we didn’t do ahead with that because of the downturn. Sometimes I think, perhaps we should have.”

Gary is no longer involved in the business and Neill’s new business partner, Michael McQuillan, is a local man who has been with the project since January this year. Neill readily concedes that by that time, the business had begun faltering a little, but he adds:

“I couldn’t let it go, it is part of the family and my passion for the business is such that I had to keep going.”

He and Michael set their minds to rejuvenating the ailing hotel and one of the first things they did was invite back well-known local chef, Raymond McArdle back into the kitchen. Raymond had trained at the Balmoral when he was 16 under its original head chef, Hugh Brown, before going on to build a well-publicised career for himself at Nuremore in Co. Monaghan and in Belfast, Tyrone and Warrenpoint, where he opened restaurants of his own.

He’d returned to Restaurant 23 before, in 2010, giving up a job at Bennett’s seafood restaurant in Warrenpoint and when Neill invited him back again earlier this year, he’d been working at Maisons in Rostrevor.

Currently, Restaurant 23 is selling out on Saturday evenings and Sunday lunchtimes, report Neill:

“Every business should play to its strengths”, he says, “and Raymond is one of ours, he is very popular and you just can’t beat that…All the staff are doing a really good job. My father used to sat that the customer is number one, but the staff need to be number two and if customers take the trouble to come to your business, then look after them and give them a great experience. Blow them away.”

As for the future, Neill is confident that his dream of adding more rooms to the offering at The Balmoral will become a reality:

“When we’re doing well, we’re looking at around 70 per cent occupancy, which is pretty high,” he says. “You would struggle to get a room here at the weekends, so more rooms are definitely a priority.

“Our main function room was refurbished in 2006, so it will be due another revamp in January, but to be honest, I couldn’t be happier than I am at the minute.  We have had great support from our suppliers such as Diageo NI and JNWine, many of whom got behind us right from the start and that made it much easier for us to get to the point we’re at.

“This is the next stage of development for The Balmoral and we are very excited to see where things will go from here.”