Dublin Merrion, Intercontinental and Clayton Airport hotels have emerged as winners in the 2019 Quality Employers Awards, organised by the Irish Hotels Federation.
The awards acknowledge excellence in human resource management in Ireland’s’s hotels and guest house sector.
Winners from outside Dublin included The Brehon Hotel, Killarney and Fitzgerald Woodlands House Hotel Limerick, Cork Airport Hotel and the Clew Bay Hotel Co Mayo.
The awards were presented by Minister for State for Tourism Brendan Griffin.
This year also saw a new award for Distinction in Human Resource Management which was open to hotels that have won Quality Employer awards in previous years. The inaugural winner was the Slieve Russell Hotel, Golf and Country Club, Co Cavan.
Chairman of the judging panel, Dr Tony Lenehan paid tribute to the category winning hotels on the excellent employee development work being done in the hotel sector.
“The hotel sector is applying best practise employment standards that were previously only linked to the technology and manufacturing sectors in Ireland,” he said.
Stacey Bland, a conference and events executive with the Midlands Park Hotel, Portlaoise, Co Laois, was named the Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) National Employee of the Year. This is the second year of the award, which celebrates and recognises the hotel employee who has made an outstanding contribution to their workplace
The tourism industry is the Republic’s largest indigenous employer and has created over 94,000 new jobs since 2011. It now supports over 260,000 jobs - equivalent to 11 per cent of total employment in Ireland with over 60,000 of these jobs in the hotels sector alone.
