Scott Geraghty wants his establishment to fit its guests like a comfortable pair of shoes. “We are a townhouse hotel, not a skyscraper,“ says Geraghty, general manager of the Ritz-Carlton, Central Park, in New York. “We’re like family.”
Homey coziness is not exactly the prevailing atmosphere outside the Ritz’s door on Central Park South. Milling tourists blend with office workers and sprightly park joggers to create a constant hubbub amid the aromas of Midtown traffic, street vendors’ grills and the horse-drawn carriages for hire across the street. The hotel itself is neither particularly small — 259 rooms over 22 floors — nor time-worn. Ritz took it over in 2001 from the St. Moritz chain and did a gut renovation to make the accommodations fewer but larger. The smallest rooms are 425 square feet large, more spacious than many Manhattan apartments.
But Geraghty and his staff have taken a cue from their many film-industry guests, creating a masterful illusion of timeless wealth and cocooned stateliness to soothe the business traveler. Subtle but studied old-world touches do part of the trick. All rooms facing the park come equipped with telescopes and a field guide to birds of New York, for those craving a bit of treetop ornithology before rushing off to their breakfast meetings. In the corridors the 1920s-style house telephones with porcelain handles and brass cradles evoke the Gatsby era. Head chef Ralph Romano emerges at noon each day to march any children on premises across the street to feed the carriage horses.
A compact, softly lit lobby that admits but does not particularly welcome passing strangers adds to the intimate effect, leaving no spare hall space for gawkers or button-holers to lurk. “You get from the front door to our elevator in 20 feet,” notes hotel marketing director David Taylor. “That has a very big appeal for guests in the entertainment world.”
But it takes more than furnishings to maintain five-star townhouse ambience in the heart of Manhattan, says Geraghty, who studied international relations at Lehigh University and cooking at the Culinary Institute of America before joining the Ritz-Carlton from rival St. Regis two years ago. “Satisfying the unexpressed wishes of our guests is our highest calling,” he says.
To divine these whims, Ritz employees turn to the Internet, drawing up profiles of soon-to-be-arriving guests and coming up with bespoke extracurricular activities or amenities to enhance their stays. “We are Google masters,” the general manager boasts. Spotting that a retired military officer was arriving during New York’s Fleet Week, Geraghty arranged a private tour of some of the visiting vessels. A guest with an equestrian passion got an unanticipated trot with New York Police Department mounted police. The Arab sheikhs who frequent the $14,500-a-night Royal Suite on the 22nd floor find prayer rugs awaiting them, as well as room layouts that offer royal family members some privacy from their entourage of cooks, physicians and body guards. “This hotel does a great job understanding the idiosyncrasies of the Middle Eastern guest,” Taylor says.
Change comes, too, to the Ritz, albeit gently and around the edges. A formal restaurant on the Sixth Avenue side of the lobby was replaced a few years back by BLT Market, a bistro-style restaurant where chef Laurent Tourondel serves a rotating “locavore” menu based on fresh produce from New York–area markets, with dishes such as Parmesan-crusted halibut with braised leeks and polenta in a foie gras sauce. The rooms are equipped with iPod docking stations, and guests can borrow iPads from the front desk.
More substantive shifts can be seen in the hotel’s clientele. A few illnesses among the Persian Gulf elite, necessitating long New York hospital stays, helped cushion the impact of the economic downturn, Taylor says. But to offset weakness on the home front, his sales team is venturing deeper into emerging markets — notably Brazil, where a Ritz rep travels once a quarter to woo upscale travel agents.
Yet newcomers stay at the Ritz to be part of the tradition, not to change it. At least that is Geraghty’s doctrine. Revenue per room in U.S. luxury hotels crashed by 24 percent in 2009, according to Hendersonville, Tennessee–based Smith Travel Research, and the Ritz-Carlton has had to make some layoffs; but three immaculately groomed concierges still stand on duty at the front desk, ready to cater to guests’ every need. A bluff-looking knot of businessmen hashes out a new contract amid the plush upholstery of the Club Lounge, a second-floor hideaway available to guests for a mere $250. A lady with a French accent weighs the relative merits of a caviar or cucumber facial scrub at the spa, the only one in New York operated by Switzerland’s ultraposh La Prairie. All seems right in the world for those who can still afford it. Stability sells in these turbulent times.
