Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, and I'm very excited

because for the first time, I'm staying in the Europa Hotel in Belfast, an absolute landmark for

anybody who's been to the city and one with them. Well, it's fair to say, a bit of a troubled history.

Better still, I'm with Andy McNeil, who is the general manager.

But Andy, you didn't start here as a general manager, did you?

No, I started here in 1998 as a waiter, and I worked here for 20 years and then in 2018 they asked me to go

and manage one of the sister properties so I moved around the group and then last year there was a bit

of a restructure and the general manager from here was made managing director so they asked me to

come back as general manager so i was buzzing because it's such an iconic hotel well it certainly is

a one which well before you started did have quite a lot of difficulties in particular given the

prime location given the troubles it it was, well, very sadly, a target.

Yes, so we call the hotel the world famous, and it is famous because it used to be the most

bombed hotel in the world. It was bombed 34, 35 times, and somewhere in Iraq has now taken that

over. So I think we're the most

bombed in Europe, but everyone remembers this because of the troubles and the target of the

bombings at the hotels. But since 1998, thankfully, there hasn't been any more bombings.

And tell me about the location of the hotel. We're looking out actually

from one of the 10th floor rooms across a wonderful view over to the hills. It's what makes it

so special apart from the fact that, well, it seems to be very comfortable and has a lovely view.

It has an amazing location. You're right in the heart of

the city centre and Belfast for the next few years it's going to transform because we're building

a hub right next door to us which is going to be the Grand Central Station. So all the trains from

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