Mike Magrane – the Mentor of the Manchester Midland

Wednesday, 19 January 2011 10:44

Running a city’s iconic hotel was not new to Mike, because even at 33 he already had under his belt the experience of being General Manager of The Queens Hotel in the very centre of Leeds.
The Midland has 312 guestrooms and a dozen function rooms. The largest, The Alexandra Suite, can seat over 600 theatre style.
‘We are very much a hotel for the business sector’, says Mike, ‘but we are not a hotel specialising in transient business visitors. Our function rooms are a key asset to feed business to our rooms – plus the fact that we are literally just a few steps from Manchester Central, one of the country’s finest exhibition and convention centres. ‘We accommodate large numbers of delegates to their events and, of course, we can provide break-out rooms and meeting facilities for them too, as well as hosting our own client events.’
Mike has agreed to put his very wide and deep experience at the disposal of event organisers by acting as a Mentor at the Hospitality Show in Birmingham on Tuesday, 25th January 2011. Visitors can register in advance to meet him on the website www.hospitalityshow.co.uk and can ask his advice, where they think his expertise can be brought to bear.
Mike knows he will be asked for guidance and opinions on career structure; it is true that his rise from the lowest ranks of hotel employment has been meteoric and anyone should listen to him with interest on that topic.
The Midland has five apprentices and Mike is sure that the hotel sector can now offer good wages and good prospects for youngsters. It can also offer security of employment, seeing that the Midland’s concierge has been there 52 years and maintenance of the building has been looked after by the same man for 43 years.
But it is clear that he can also have some valuable advice to offer on how to get the best out of your hotel when organising an event.
‘A key part of the cycle in setting up an event’, says Mike, ‘is the pre-event meeting. Organisers have to turn up in person to meet with their opposite numbers, the Relationship Managers, so that every detail of the event is looked at in advance. At the Midland we have seven people doing that job and each event has one of them to be at the organiser’s elbow through the whole project in order to assist and to act as the interface with all the departments in the hotel.’

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