Trends : ‘Tis the Season to Be Jolly, Lavish, but a Little Drier : Stay-Over at the Hotel Now Almost a Standard Feature

Take two live sea lions--add a 5,000-gallon pool; 100 tons of sand; a 10-foot-tall-by-90-foot-long plywood Love Boat replica; 20 fire extinguishers; flambeed bananas for 1,500; two off-duty police officers and an off-duty fireman, just in case; a cadre of limbo dancers, and a 25-foot-tall pine.

Shake well, and what do you have?

Just another holiday office party as planned by Willard E. Dunlap III, the man who once rented Anaheim Stadium and persuaded Santa Claus to parachute onto the infield for the Christmas viewing pleasure of developer Cabot, Cabot & Forbes’ brokers and clients.

“You don’t cut corners on something this extreme,” said Dunlap, who serves as the company’s vice president for commercial development when he’s not planning parties.

“Cabot’s Caribbean Christmas,” a $100,000 extravaganza held in an unfinished Anaheim office building, is proof that the 1987 holiday office party is alive and lavish, regardless of the Oct. 19 stock market crash and the threat of recession.

But while excess may still be the order of the night, there are indications that life is a lot less liquid out there on the party circuit circa 1987.

Although Cabot clients and brokers spent Thursday night noshing and nogging, employees of the Irvine Co. were treated this season to lunches--where alcohol is frowned upon.

“We’re not prohibiting people from drinking wine at the lunches, but we’re not encouraging it either,” said Dan Beals, the Irvine Co.’s senior director of human resources. “I think companies in particular are concerned about the potential liability. No one wants to see an employee get banged up anywhere--especially on the way home from a Christmas party.”

It may not be an entirely dry December on the company party front, but caterers, hoteliers and businesses alike contend that liability scares and stiff sentences for drunk driving are creating a newfound atmosphere of temperance in this holiday season.

“No more lengthy cocktail parties and bottles of Scotch for presents,” said Alan Greeley, owner and chef of the Golden Truffle restaurant and catering service in Costa Mesa. “A lot of these big companies are shredded by liability. So they do them (parties) in hotels. Then if somebody does have a big wazoo time, they can offer them a bed.”

In a 1971 case, the California Supreme Court said that a commercial seller of alcohol could be held liable for selling drinks to an obviously intoxicated person. Seven years later, the court extended liability to “social hosts” who serve liquor to the obviously drunk.

Later legislation put an end to this court-created liability, but employers are still concerned about the potential for trouble. In addition, a heightened social awareness of alcohol-related problems in the 1980s has left a legacy of caution.

At the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel, where the slogan this season is, “Take the elevator home,” the number of rooms reserved for post-party snoozing has doubled, and the hotel has instituted a “midnight coffee bar” to help revelers sober up before hitting the road.

Cindy Novotny, the hotel’s director of marketing, said the Westin is offering companies a Christmas party package with a double-occupancy room for $60 instead of the regular $135.

“Most of our parties average about 200 people, and we could easily get 75 room reservations out of those 200 people this season,” Novotny said. “Last year, probably only 35 to 40 would spend the night.”

In addition, Novotny said that most company parties at the Costa Mesa hotel now feature more food than in the past to help employees absorb the cocktails they imbibe.

“And we’ve sold a lot of non-alcoholic wines, egg nog, wassail, that sort of thing, to businesses for their parties,” Novotny said. “None that I know of said, ‘No liquor,’ but all provided more non-alcoholic beverages than usual.”

Mitsubishi Motor Sales, which has its national headquarters in Fountain Valley, held a company party for 500 employees and their guests at the Westin early in December and made hotel rooms available to party-goers through the Christmas corporate discount.

“We tried to work an arrangement with the hotel so that if employees wanted to stay over, they could work with the hotel and get a room,” said Norman Baker, Mitsubishi’s human resources manager. “It was paid for by the employees, . . . and I would guess that a fairly good number stayed. I think that one of the considerations in selecting a hotel was the fact that it would be able to accommodate employees if they chose to stay over.”

Karen Hartlieb, director of catering for the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Laguna Niguel, said her establishment has had an “amazing” number of corporate post-party reservations, about 250 in December alone, all “because of the strict driving laws and sobriety checkpoints.” The Ritz-Carlton offers catered parties a room rate of $150 for single or double occupancy, down from $210.

Grant Showley, president of Showley-Wrightson catering in Newport Beach, said that his firm is noticing an increase in responsibility among party-goers themselves.

“The designated driver is pretty popular right now, where a group of people come together and choose one who won’t drink,” Showley said. “We’re always sending out Crystal Geyser Water and Perrier to these business parties. That’s the norm. People are not drinking as much as they had in the past.”

One major lesson of this holiday party season, though, is that celebrations can be sober and splashy at the same time.

“The drinking is down a lot,” said Greeley of the Golden Truffle, “. . . but I’m still dropping Santa off from helicopters.”

At the Ritz-Carlton, Hartlieb said: “If anything, I think they’re spending more. I’m having very, very high revenue-producing Christmas parties this year.” A bill of $16,000 for food, beverages and service alone is average for a company party of 200 at the Laguna Niguel hotel.

“Ice carvings are extremely popular this year, everything from Rudolph and the reindeer to Christmas wreaths with big red bows,” Hartlieb said. “People are spending money at the holiday season. . . . It’s an acknowledgement to their clients and staff that they want to thank them.”

Gratitude is a good business strategy, said Dunlap, who has planned singularly sumptuous parties for Cabot, Cabot & Forbes over the past six years.

In addition to Thursday’s tropical theme, Dunlap has staged a Dickens Christmas, complete with an indoor ice rink; a Bavarian Christmas, with 65 live Christmas trees and an entire high school choir singing carols, and once even rented the Spruce Goose for a ‘40s do.

“The people invited . . . are the mainstay of our business,” Dunlap said. “Considering how important they are, we think it’s worthwhile.”