With room rates starting at $249 per night at the new $300 million Ritz-Carlton Highlands perched high above Martis Valley, it’s doubtful that many locals will be resting their weary heads there for the night. But the luxury hotel is offering up something that’s much needed in the region right now – jobs.
‘It’s exciting for the Ritz-Carlton to be creating jobs in northern California and being part of an economic boost for the region,’ said PR Director Steven Holt in a recent phone interview. And he’s not just talking about the 300 jobs that the company is in the process of hiring for currently. ‘We’ve created 400 jobs a day – a total of 1,158 people have worked on this project – since July of 2006.’
Two-thousand applications were submitted online over the last three weeks alone, and the human resources staff is working feverishly to comb through the piles and conduct interviews for the hundreds of open positions. The vast majority of the applicants are local residents, according to Holt. Many of the senior staff, like Holt himself, came to Tahoe from out of the area to work in the resort’s pre-opening office. Holt left a job at a hotel in Aspen to come to Truckee, has been here a year now and is really enjoying it. ‘Truckee is such a cool town,’ he commented.
With 170 guest rooms, 23 private Ritz-Carlton residences and 25 Ritz-Carlton Destination Club fractional ownership residences to fill, is Steven Holt nervous at all about the fate of the resort hotel in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression?
‘We pre-sold $40 million worth of real estate on the property, so that was a good indication,’ he said. ‘With the newness of the property and Tahoe being such a world-class destination, I’m cautiously optimistic. It’s important for us to get snow early.’
Hallelujah to that!
If you feel like you might have missed your chance to apply for a job at the Ritz-Carlton this time around, don’t fret. You can still apply online for a variety of positions and the Ritz isn’t going anywhere either. There’s a saying in the hotel business: ‘Once you open your doors, you never close them again,’ Holt said. ‘We’re gonna be here for the next 50 or 100 years or more.’
A ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for the Ritz-Carlton Highlands on Dec. 9. To look for jobs and learn more about the resort’s offerings, visit ritzcarlton.com.
~ Beth Ingalls, bingalls@moonshineink.com.
