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Special guests enjoying life at Newpark hotel

The farm animals enjoy a luxury hotel experience

As we experience these unprecedented times during the current lockdown which has seen no guests in the hotel for the time being. However, the friendly animals in our Wildlife Farm are still being looked after by the staff at the Newpark Hotel in Kilkenny. The Wildlife Farm is located on the grounds to the rear of the hotel and plays host to a range of friendly farm animals including rabbits, peacocks, emu’s, alpacas, llamas, ponies, donkeys and much more!

With no guests at present, we decided to treat some of the animals to experience the warm welcome and high-class facilities that our Kilkenny hotel has to offer as they aren’t normally allowed in the main hotel premises.

General Manager Paul Beehan, Niall Dunne Operations Manager and Nicky Glendon Head Chef were on hand to guide the animals through the check-in process and escort them to their bedrooms before they went on to enjoy some Afternoon Tea, a quick dip in the swimming pool, a quick cocktail in Scotts Bar, before setting off as happy guests following a delightful break.

Making the video

The production of the video was greatly assisted by Peter Cullen who recorded and edited the video and Willie Dunne, Marc Leahy & Larry McEnroe who had the job of keeping the animals under control. The owner Mr John Flynn acted as a producer to oversees everything and who was brave enough to let us bring the animals inside the hotel.

The video was recorded using two mobile phones by one of our managers Peter Cullen who was assisted by Niall Dunne with the editing.

As you can imagine working with animals does not go according to plan all the time. and we had to adapt and improvise continually during the shoot. but we were delighted with the end result. We could also do a blooper video as have so much footage of things not going according to plan.

Video popularity

Currently, it has 95,000 views and over 1,300 likes and 950 shares on the Newpark Hote Facebook page in addition to RTE's social channels. The video also appeared on the Irish Independent with as many as 300,000 views across all platforms at the time of writing which is amazing.

Future plans

The hotel is continuing to develop interesting and engaging content during the lockdown period to help keep stay in touch with the staff as well as our loyal customer and guests. Hotels have always been places where stories are made (wedding & birthdays) so there will be plenty to keep us occupied over the coming weeks.

The Outlook

Like all businesses, we have to wait and see what government guidelines are going to be in relation to the hospitality sector, but at the Newpark Hotel we will be keeping a positive outlook and we will adapt and evolve to any future situations that we will face.

We are currently doing a drive through carvery lunch every Sunday which is great as it keeps us doing what we do best, looking after customers. And it will make it easier for us when we do open back fully as we won't be out of practice!