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Originally Posted by yyzer
Well, today's the day....she is finally opening.....pic by asphaltplanet.ca......
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yyzr posted this over at UT
Toronto puts on The Ritz
There is a thick, palpable energy at Toronto’s newest five star hotel.
Construction workers and hotel employees do a perilous dance rushing to unveil the city’s first Ritz Carlton for an official opening Wednesday.
In the elegant hotel lobby adorned with bronze maple leafs embedded in the floor, men and women in blue Ritz Carlton lab coats back are lecturing employees on the fine art of greeting guests.
In the sleek wood and leather spa, hotel workers are practicing manicures on each other.
In the second floor hotel restaurant, employees are eating filet mignon. They pay for the meal with play money.
In the top floor club rooms reserved for executives, the executive pastry chef has prepared a spread of petit fours. Despite an absence of guests, he has been doing this for the last several days.
Putting on the Ritz is not taken lightly by parent company Marriott Corp which has flown in a crack team of trainers to make sure the hotel works. Every operational detail is worked out with military precision before the doors open.
The Star got an exclusive sneak preview of the city’s most anticipated hotel opening. The cheapest rooms in February start at $485 per night. A 2,500 square foot suite costs $6,500 per night. Condos in the building start from $1.6 million. The penthouse was sold four years ago for more than $10 million to buyers who were originally from Hong Kong.
“This is about taking Toronto to a new level of luxury,” says General Manager Tim Terceira, the drill sergeant at the heart of the operation. “At the Ritz, the guest expects excellence from the moment they step in the door.”
The hotel is open on Wednesday, but will not accept its first guest till Friday.
Sources say that honour will go to Piers Handling, the co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival. That seems appropriate, since the hotel will likely be where a good portion of the Hollywood stars will stay since the festival moved to the area with the debut of the Bell Lightbox.
The hotel is in the city’s entertainment district, just a block north of the Metro Convention Centre.
It will boast the city’s largest celebrity worthy spa at 23,000 square feet. It will employ 450 workers to pamper guests in 267 rooms. There are 450 pieces of original Canadian artwork hung on the walls.
The list goes on. But at this level, it’s about the service.
We are sitting by a fireplace at the sleek lounge at the back of the hotel. The hotel is not operational, but within seconds a server brings over a mixture of nuts, popcorn and assorted snacks. Perhaps a drink?
The Ritz motto is “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” Employees carry the rules in their wallet.
It sounds antiquated. But one could get used to this. The only five diamond property in Canada is Four Seasons Whistler. Over the years, Toronto has not cut it.
But that will change soon. The AAA still has to evaluate the hotel to give it an official rating. But no one is betting against the Ritz. However, it is only the first barrage in the battle of the fluffy pillows.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower opens next month in the city’s financial core. That will be followed by a new Shangri-La Toronto on University Avenue, and a new Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville.
“I think it will be good for Toronto, and I think we need each other. We will collectively add tremendous value to the city,” says Terceira.
One reason is that big conventions sometimes skip the city, because of a lack of top quality hotel space, says Terceira. More choice means more options for meeting planners and more revenue for the city.
The competition though, will be brutal. Few cities have seen this many five star rooms come on stream all at once.
“When you have that many rooms come on the market that close to each other it will take time to absorb,” says Greg Kwong, executive vice president of CB Richard Ellis. “At this level less than 5 per cent of the market will be able to utilize this class of hotel.”
However, Michael Beckley, senior vice president of Marriott International, argues that the total amount of new rooms will not swamp the Toronto market.
“You have to look at it in broad strokes. There are about 1,000 rooms, out of a universe of more than 35,000 rooms in the Greater Toronto Area — that’s ultimately not a lot,” he says.
The competition regardless, will be merciless. Terceira will not have time to rest on his laurels. Next month the Trump opens and it is gunning for his customers.
“I was always shocked when I visited Toronto that it didn’t have any five star hotels, especially since it was the financial capital of the country,” says Mickael Damelincourt, general manager of the Trump.
But like Terceira, Damelincourt is diplomatic.
“Ultimately, all together we have to give the consumer a value proposition of why we are $100 or $200 higher than the next guy,” says Damelincourt. “We mean to prove to them that we are worth it.”
The hotel chains are taking the competition seriously. Terceira is one of Marriott’s top executives, stepping down from a vice-president position to get back in the trenches. Damelincourt was a seasoned executive with Le Meridien Hotel & Resorts before he left to help start up Trump Chicago and now Toronto.
Perhaps none will be more proud on Wednesday when the Ritz opens than Beckley. It was his initiative to bring the Ritz to Toronto, something he has been working on since 1995.
His first teamed up with a developer in 2000 that had purchased the Bay St. plot of land that now houses the Trump hotel.
http://www.thestar.com/business/arti...ts-on-the-ritz
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