'Upwards and onwards' as Slieve Russell looks to reopen next week

One of the county’s best known businesses will reopen to the public next week after a harrowing Christmas that saw an outbreak of the winter vomiting bug force its closure to the public, writes Thomas Lyons.
General Manager of the Slieve Russell, Tony Walker, says that it is now “upwards and onwards” as the Ballyconnell hotel looks to restore public confidence.
The Slieve Russell closed to the public on Monday, December 19. At the time the hotel’s temporary closure was taken as a “proactive and precautionary measure”. The hotel notified the HSE and the Environmental Health Officers and took a number of preventative actions over the past weeks to reduce any risks relating to this virus.
Mr Walker said: “An outbreak of Norovirus is something that is completely out of our control. Now we are looking to restore public confidence. That confidence is dented, it is a matter of being cognisant of that, moving forward and ensuring that we take the appropriate steps to restore public confidence, particularly with our local customers and clients that visit the hotel on a regular basis. That is a job of work and we have to prepare for it. We will be focusing on that for the next couple of weeks.”

Stressful
The hotel’s General Manager says that the last few weeks have been difficult. “Of course it was stressful. It is still a bit up in the air. At this point, there is no firm day of opening. We are just working away at the moment preparing the hotel for the re-opening. I would like to think that we would be opened by next week.”
From a financial perspective the closure was a hard blow for the business. “At this point it is difficult to estimate the cost of the closure. Christmas week is one of our busiest weeks of the year, so financially it is going to be a fairly significant loss. That week is gone, 2016 is closed and, as far as we are concerned, it is upwards and onward to 2017. Getting the business back up again is our priority. We will put this behind us an move on,” Mr Walker said.
He explained that the Slieve Russell made sure that the closure did not impact on the workers. “It was very much out of our control and the staff’s control. We have a lot of loyal staff who worked for us for a long number of years. It is important that we look after them at times like this.”
As the story made national headlines, the rumour mill worked overtime to add embellishments to the narrative. Mr Walker says that suggestions that the bedding and curtains were burned or that there was a complete overall of the air conditioning are wide of the mark. “That is absolute rubbish. That beats Banagher, I find it hard to believe that people make such things up. The truth is that the we have cleaners in at the moment and we will be opened by next week.”