Big Interview: John Toner, the legendary troubles-era hotel manager, talks about his autobiography

John Toner is a man synonymous with Northern Ireland’s hospitality industry, having enjoyed an illustrious 40-year career, mainly with the prestigious Hastings group, working during the darkest days of the troubles, and into burgeoning peacetime.

His many remembrances, such as the hotels he managed being robbed and bombed, many near misses where his own life was under threat in different ways, and the many highs of his career, have been brought to book in his compelling autobiography, A Job Well Done: Adventures in Life, Hospitality and Hotels, co-written by Petesy Burns.

John explains: “The day after I retired I went to a Tai Chi class in the Slieve Donard, where Petesy was the instructor. One day after a class Petesy and I got talking and he suggested that I should write a book about my experiences.

“Throughout my career, because I was in such opportune places at times, people used to say to me ‘John, you should write down your experiences of what’s happening – because some day, people might be interested in reading it’. That inspired me to write the book and to work with Petesy to put it together. He got comments from my previous employers, from Howard Hastings, and from all my family too and slotted them in to the book.”

John Toner, who now lives in Newcastle, no longer practices Tai Chi, due to ill health. Sadly, since his retirement John has suffered serious ill health, including two heart attacks, macular degeneration, a disease that affects a person's central vision, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung condition in which the lungs become scarred and breathing becomes increasingly difficult.

But, as he writes in the book, John is not sitting around feeling sorry for himself.

“Thank God I have a good attitude toward it and I just feel I have to get on and make the most of the time I have left.”

Born in 1948, John came from humble beginnings in Co Sligo. His school and early working years were spent north of the border, where he developed his passion for the hospitality business.

"I had two sisters that were married and lived in Larne. And while I was growing up I got a summer job in the King’s Arms Hotel in Larne and that made me realise that hotels and hospitality was something that I would like to do.”

After hospitality training in the Republic of Ireland and London he found work at the Grand Central Hotel on Belfast’s Royal Avenue. While there he worked his way up to junior management and from that time became sought after as a hotel manager.

He recalls the splendour of the original Victorian Grand Central, which attracted a roll call of distinguished guests down the years, from Winston Churchill, Al Johnson and Mario Lanzo to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

“It was the place to be. It was one of the prestige hotels in Ireland. In those days it would have been Belfast’s answer to the Gresham in Dublin. It used to have international head chefs. It really was of the highest possible standard – there was the finest Belfast damask linen, everything was solid silver and it was just an experience.”

John started working in hospitality during the 1970s, when Northern Ireland was unravelling. In the introduction to his autobiography he witnesses the burning of Bombay Street from the top of the Grand Central Hotel. This sets the scene for what is to come, a rollercoaster of a journey of discovery and personal development in a very bleak and seemingly hopeless place.

The book chronicles John’s journey from his birthplace, Mullaghmore; a place he would return to and have the freedom of the town bestowed on him by Lord Mountbatten; through to his recognition as someone central to the development of hospitality in Northern Ireland by way of an MBE for his outstanding contribution to the hospitality industry.

John, who became a director in the Hastings Hotels group, managed most of the hotels in the group, including the Slieve Donard, the Ballygally, the Stormont and the Europa, which had the unenviable status of being the most bombed hotel in Europe, (a title it lost to the Sarajevo Holiday Inn in the 1990s).

“When I was in the Stormont Hotel in the early 1990s, Sir William (Hastings) said to me he was thinking of buying the Europa and asked would I go in and manage it. I said I would, so I moved to the Europa when Hastings bought it, just after the final bomb in May 1993. I was there through the whole redevelopment of the Europa, to what you see today.”

The turnaround of the Europa happened at a time when hopes for a political settlement were running high and people who were central in negotiating an agreement were arriving in large numbers and staying at the Europa. John became personal friends with many of the key people involved in the process and in his own way was at the centre of it. The payoff had to be the visit of the Clintons.

In the book readers are given a real insight into just what it took for the hotel to prepare for the visit right down to the secret service combing the hotel for weeks before and the creation of a mini White House in one of the suites at the hotel. There is a palpable sense of impending change, and the excitement and hopes of that crucial time in Northern Ireland’s history is relived on the pages. That John met the Clintons may be relevant, but what comes across with more relevance is that the Clintons met John Toner. This is a true moment in history from a completely unique perspective and all told in John’s matter-of-fact way.

“One of the things that stands out in my career was the time I met Hillary Clinton. I had met her a few times, but the time she was over with the president and the two of them stayed in the Europa, I was meeting them before they left to go down to Dublin.

“There were only four people in the queue to meet them. I was second. All the pleasantries were exhausted so I just said to Mrs Clinton, ‘I would like, on a personal note, to thank you and the president for coming to Northern Ireland and for all you are doing for peace in our time. I have five kids and it would be great to see them growing up in some peace and harmony in Northern Ireland. She turned round to me and said, ‘John, we’ve really enjoyed meeting the people of Belfast and Northern Ireland and that they will constantly be in our thoughts and prayers in the White House’. It was very genuine, and it wasn’t for any ears, it’s just what she felt to say that day.”

So what, does John, feel makes a good hotel manager.

“First of all you have to have a passion for looking after people, for being ‘mein host’, for making sure that people are satisfied and enjoy their experiences within the hotel. It’s the gratitude you get from them that makes it all worth it.”

John, who has been married to Cathy for 49 years and has five children, concedes it is an industry known for long, unsociable hours.

“You have to come to terms with that – it puts everything else to the back a bit, unfortunately. But I got used to it and I was able to manage my time quite well.

"You are committing to a life of hospitality, of caring for people and looking after them. You must be fully committed. It does have anti-social hours and you’ve got to accept that, because the business doesn’t work any other way. You have to approach it with an open heart and an open mind to all aspects of the job.”

A Job Well Done: Adventures in Life, Hospitality and Hotels by John Toner and Petesy Burns is available from http://www.burnsbooks.co.uk, priced £20 plus p&p