Swanky Ritz-Carlton Quickly Joining Ranks of Top-Drawing Hotels
The Ritz-Carlton hotel, apparently shaking off the bad publicity surrounding claims it failed to fully pay its building contractors, is fast emerging as one of the nation’s top-drawing resort hotels.
The plush, $100-million oceanfront hotel in Laguna Niguel expects to post a 90% occupancy rate for August--a rate analysts say is exceptional for any hotel in its first year of business.
And the Ritz-Carlton has had to overcome the image problems that accompanied news reports about its debts, which have shrunk to $700,000 from the $9 million of a year ago.
At one point, the Ritz-Carlton’s prime contractor obtained a court order allowing it to place a marshal in the hotel’s marble-floored lobby to impound guest receipts--an action guaranteed to drive a luxury hotel’s guests away.
But the marshal never set foot in the hotel and, with most creditors now paid off, signs of better times at the Ritz-Carlton are everywhere.
Although Orange County appears to have a glut of new hotel rooms on stream, the Ritz-Carlton has been aided by stiff regulations on coastal area construction that have limited the number of first-class oceanfront resorts in the state to just a handful. The Ritz-Carlton now stands not only as the newest, swankiest, and perhaps the most popular of the oceanfront hotels, but as one of the top hostelries anywhere in California.
Its occupancy rates and some room rates have increased and the popularity of the hotel’s posh restaurants may force management to add yet another in 1986.
And while the 394-room hotel--owned by Prudential Insurance Co. of America--is just a year old, hotel industry consultants say it already ranks among the top three luxury hotels in Southern California and is gaining national recognition.
By next year, the Ritz-Carlton could join the exclusive company of only two other Southern California hotels--L’Ermitage Hotel Degrande Classe in Beverly Hills and the Westgate in San Diego--that receive the Automobile Club of America’s five-diamond rating, said Clarence Garlough, the Auto Club’s manager of approved accommodations.
The Auto Club does not give five-diamond awards to first-year hotels, but at the Ritz-Carlton, “We know the potential is there,” Garlough said. “We are very favorably impressed,” he said. Less than 0.3% of the hotels rated by the Auto Club receive the five-diamond award. This year, the Ritz-Carlton received the same four-diamond rating as the Biltmore in Santa Barbara.
The biggest demand at the Ritz-Carlton is for the hotel’s so-called “Club Level” rooms, which offer concierge service and cost from $180 to $250 per night, said William Hall, the hotel’s general manager. As a result, the hotel recently converted an entire floor of lower-priced rooms into these quarters, for a total of 88 club-level rooms on two floors.
The hotel raised the rates for the new “club” rooms by 22%-- after the prices went up, so did occupancy. The hotel’s August occupancy rates are expected to top 90%--an extremely high figure for a 1-year-old hotel. Occupancy rates for the Ritz’s first full year are expected to exceed 75%, with nearly a 50-50 split between vacationers and business guests, Hall said.
High occupancy at the Ritz-Carlton is especially unusual because the hotel “has had to go out and develop its own market,” said David Kinkaid, consultant at the Costa Mesa office of the accounting firm Laventhol & Horwath. Because the hotel is “off the beaten path,” Kinkaid said, “it is attracting travelers who go there as a destination.”
That is exactly what the hotel wants, said Colgate Holmes, president and chief executive of Ritz-Carlton. “It’s always wonderful to open a hotel and hit a home run,” he said. The resort already ranks among the most successful of the chain’s dozen hotels, Holmes said.
So popular are the hotel’s Sunday brunches, that some area residents have been forced to make reservations up to three months in advance.
