Ritz-Carlton

:This article is about the hotel brand Ritz-Carlton Hotels, for other uses please see Ritz (disambiguation)
thumb|The Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C., United States
thumb|The Ritz Carlton Millenia, Singapore
The Ritz-Carlton is a brand of luxury hotels and resorts with 75 properties located in major cities and resorts in 24 countries worldwide. It also has major service training operations in its Ritz-Carlton Learning Institute and Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center, created by Ritz-Carlton executive (emeritus) Leonardo Inghilleri, where nearly 50,000 executives from other companies worldwide have been trained in the Ritz-Carlton principles of service.
The name Ritz-Carlton dates back to the Hôtel Ritz Paris and the Ritz Hotel in London, both operated by the legendary hotelier César Ritz. Loosely related hotels bearing the Ritz name began to appear in North America, including the Ritz-Carlton Montreal in 1912 and the Ritz-Carlton Boston in 1927. The Ritz-Carlton Boston was an immediate success, and became an enduring paragon of high society. In 1983, after two ownership transitions, the expansion of the Boston operation into a worldwide chain of Ritz-Carlton hotels began, headed by hotelier Horst Schulze and developer William B. Johnson.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company LLC is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Marriott International. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company currently has 32,000 employees. The Ritz-Carlton headquarters are found in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a community along the border of Washington, D.C. COO is Simon Cooper who is also President of Marriott International and President of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is Herve Humler.
==History==
Several Ritz-Carlton Hotels were built in the North America in the early 20th century, including Montreal in 1912, in New York City in 1917 (located at Forty-sixth and Madison Avenue, where Louis Diat ran the kitchens and "famously invented vichyssoise"., in Philadelphia, Atlantic City in 1921, Boca Raton, and in Boston in 1927. By 1940, only the Ritz-Carlton Boston, run by its founder Edward N. Wyner, and the Atlantic City location remained. Wyner's Ritz-Carlton Boston was a legendary feature of elite Boston, allowing only high-society guests and enforcing a strict dress code. During the Great Depression, Wyner kept the lights on in empty rooms to preserve the hotel's reputation. 
After Wyner's death in 1961, his family sold the hotel in 1964 to Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, run by Gerald F. Blakeley, Jr. Blakeley ran the Ritz-Carlton Boston for another two decades before he sold it in 1983 to developer William B. Johnson, who assembled a four person development team in Atlanta, headed by hotelier Horst Schulze, to create the Ritz-Carlton concept. Schulze instituted a company-wide concentration on both the personal and the data-driven sides of service: He coined the company's well-known customer/employee-centered credo, "We are Ladies and Gentleman Serving Ladies and Gentlemen" and the set of specific service standards on which Ritz-Carlton employees base service through the present day. Under his leadership the hotels earned an unprecedented two Malcolm Baldrige Quality Awards, and grew from four to forty U.S. locations. In 1996, Schulze's group sold a 49-percent stake in The Ritz-Carlton to Marriott and in 2000, Marriott International purchased the remaining 51-percent when Schulze left with other executives to create the West Paces Hotel Group. 
thumb|The Ritz Carlton logo at the former Hong Kong property in Central. 
The Ritz-Carlton operates fractional residences at several locations in the United States under the name Ritz-Carlton Destination Club. Properties include Aspen Highlands and Bachelor Gulch in Colorado, St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, San Francisco, CA and Jupiter, FL. The Ritz-Carlton hotel at Water Tower Place in Chicago is a Four Seasons-managed property, due to the sale of the Ritz-Carlton name for this location prior to the creation of the Atlanta group, and the engagement of Four Seasons by the property owner.
===Sale of original property===
In 2001, a new Ritz-Carlton opened in Boston at 10 Avery Street, just across the Public Garden and Boston Common from the original Ritz-Carlton Boston at 15 Arlington Street. In 2007, the original property was sold to Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, a subsidiary of the India-based Tata Group, which now operates it as the Taj Boston.
==Awards==
The Ritz-Carlton has been featured on Zagat Survey Top Lists for dining, hotels and service. The Dallas, USA and Wolfsburg, Germany locations both received top honors from Zagat in 2009, including Top Large Hotel for the Dallas location. The Ritz-Carlton is the only company to date to win two Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards (1992 and 1999). The Ritz-Carlton's President and COO Horst Schulze was recognized for the Ritz-Carlton's contributions during his tenure with Corporate Hotelier of the World Ishikawa Medal for contributions to the Quality movement.
===Tallest hotel in the world===
In April 2011, Ritz-Carlton opened a hotel on floors 102-118 of the International Commerce Centre in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The lobby is above the ground, making the hotel the tallest in Asia.
===Other accomplishments===
Ritz-Carlton is notable for attempting to share its knowledge of quality as it applies to service. Initially this was done at the request of the Baldrige committee, but Ritz-Carlton ultimately adopted this as a central mission through the creation of The Ritz-Carlton Learning Institute and The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center. 
The Ritz-Carlton Charlotte which opened in October 2009 is the first Ritz-Carlton property to earn LEED Gold Certification and the youngest Ritz-Carlton property to earn 5 diamonds, and is the only 5 diamond property in Charlotte (and one of only three in the state of North Carolina). 
The Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott at LA Live opened February 2010 and share the first skyscraper built since the early 1990s in downtown Los Angeles. The Ritz-Carlton LA Live was awarded a LEED silver certification.
==Terrorist attacks==
===2009 Jakarta hotel bombing===
On Friday 17 July 2009 at 07:47 a.m. Jakarta time, a bomb exploded in The Ritz-Carlton Mega Kuningan, Jakarta, Indonesia destroying the first floor of the hotel. The explosion occurred 2 minutes after the explosion at the nearby JW Marriott Hotel. The hotel was scheduled to host the Manchester United football club the following Monday during the Indonesia leg of its Asia Tour, but the visit was canceled due to the bombing. Nine people including two suicide bombers were killed.
==In popular culture==
In E. B. White's children's novel The Trumpet of the Swan, the main character Louis (a trumpeter swan) stays at the Ritz-Carlton Boston, where he eats watercress sandwiches and sleeps in the bathtub. On the HBO original series Boardwalk Empire, the character of Enoch "Nucky" Thompson (portrayed by Steve Buscemi), the treasurer of Atlantic County, occupies the entire 9th floor of a fictionalized version of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The real Enoch "Nucky" Johnson on which Nucky Thompson was based did in fact occupy an entire floor of suites at the Ritz-Carlton Atlantic City until his arrest in 1941 on charges of tax evasion.
==References==
==External links==
* Ritz-Carlton Hotel Pictures
* Ritz-Carlton Hotel Official Website
* Ritz-Carlton Destination Club Official Website
Category:Hotel chains
Category:Hospitality companies of the United States
Category:Marriott International brands
Category:Companies established in 1937
Category:Companies based in Maryland
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