My Day

Kevin Mahon, Chairman of Kilkenny Tourism

I LIVE ON a farm a mile from the centre of Kilkenny. We have two self-catering properties – an ecolodge and a restored 18th-century coach house – so they couldn’t be more different. I also run an adventure centre.

Today, I was up at 6am getting the props ready for the arrival of a corporate group for a team-building exercise. The company had recently recruited a number of new staff and my role was to assess them for potential team leadership abilities.

I studied adventure-based counselling, so this is a part of my work that I love. It’s all about posing leading questions with the aim of getting a sense of people. On other days though, I might just be running a fun day out for a company, or stag and hen dos, where there is no other objective but to have fun.

Lunch today was soup and a sandwich with the group. We did 18 short exercises in total and tonight I’ll stay up on the computer writing up my report.

Incidentally, it’s almost never the loudest or most dominant person in a group who is actually displaying the most leadership potential. Neither is it the quietest. It’s usually someone in between.

If I have guests in one of the houses, I’ll make a point of calling down at about 10.30am or so, once I think they are up and about, to drop off free-range eggs or a cake my wife Joan will have baked for them. The hardest thing to give visitors is your time, but it’s the most important thing you can do. Over the past two years,

we have made a concerted effort to stay and chat with guests, to help plan routes or recommend places to eat, and the rewards we have reaped are enormous.

People want to make that human connection. You can leave all the brochures you want on the table, but what makes all the difference is to get a personal recommendation.

There’ll be a certain amount of maintenance to do around the place during the day too, such as grass cutting.

Then I’ll have to make my way back to the office to look after the administrative side of the business, taking bookings and credit card payments or answering queries. I’ll also make sure to write a quick letter of thanks to last week’s guests.

About three times a week, I’ll have a meeting with Kilkenny Tourism, of which I am chairman. As a tourist destination we’re really lucky that Kilkenny is not by the sea, although it takes people by surprise when I say this.

But if you are thinking of visiting, say, Tramore, you’ll wait and do it in June, July or August, because you associate it with the summer. Kilkenny by contrast is the same all year round – great all the time!