By Sean Moriarty

Les Brzozka is the definition that determination and work can take you to the very top.

When he arrived in Ireland from Poland in 2006 he started as a salesman in a local furniture store.

This week he was appointed the assistant manager at the Aghadoe Heights Hotel.

Mr Les, as he affectionately known locally, always wanted to work in the hospitality industry and started out as a Trainee Manager at the Fairview Hotel in 2012 before being promoted to Duty Manager there less than a year later.

Always with his eye on the bigger picture, he took one step back to take two steps forward when he joined the team at the International Hotel in November 2015.

With support from the Coyne family, owners of the International Hotel, Les set out on a journey from the bottom to the top.

Starting out as a barman and restaurant specialist, by 2017 he was promoted to restaurant supervisor. In 2019 he joined the International Hotel’s Trainee Manager Programme, and doubled his work load by taking on courses at what was then called IT Tralee.

By March 2020, just as the pandemic set in, he was promoted to Duty Manager, and despite the disruption, he continued his studies while gathering vital on-the-job experience.

His journey reached its latest milestone in June when he passed his Hotel Management course from MTU Tralee with First Class Honours.

During the three years on the National Trainee Manager Development Programme for employees of the hotel industry he worked and gained experience in every department of the very busy 99-bedroom four-star International Hotel.

Les was the face of the International Hotel for many years, and he will be “forever grateful” to the Coyne family who run the town centre hotel.

But his new found qualification meant he was a prime target for every hotel in town and after several offers he finally got one he could not refuse from the Aghadoe Heights.

“All my life, I am not a jumper, I am committed, I became known as Mr International, and am forever grateful to Tracy and the Coyne,” he told the Killarney Advertiser. “But the college course was like a rocket.”

Les had become such a popular figure in Killarney that it often took 40 minutes to walk from the Lewis Road car park to his place of work.

“I have not left the people of Killarney or my customers,” he said. “Now I am looking over them all from the top of the hill.”