Our View: Excellent, not good enough

When the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort Association board and its consultant, Joel Rosen, unveiled recently the names of the six finalists — now down to four — to rejuvenate and redevelop the Colony, three executives’ names popped out as the type of top-flight resort/hotel operators whose skills would mesh with the Colony’s uniqueness.

That uniqueness for most of its history lay in the Colony’s ambience as a one-of-a-kind, first-class resort. It never felt chain-run. It never felt corporate. The Colony’s longtime owner, Dr. Murray “Murf” Klauber, his daughter, Katie Moulton, and their staff created a family atmosphere of relaxed luxury. Klauber calls it “casual elegance.”

Longboaters want that. They want the Colony to come back as a luxury resort that fits Longboat Key’s low-key style and yet would revive the high standards that brought such luxury condominium projects as L’Ambiance, the Sanctuary, En Provence, Vizcaya, Villa di Lancia and the Water Club.

Imagine what a boost the region, not just Longboat Key, would experience if the Colony and the Longboat Key Club’s proposed resort/hotel operated in that five-star world. Not stuffy, snobby, out-of-reach luxury. The kind of luxury that marked Ritz-Carlton Hotels when it was the standard for luxury and service in the mid-’80s and ’90s.

The man who created that world standard has now created another world standard in luxury resorts. And he seemed a perfect fit to revive the Colony. That man is Horst Schulze, a charter member and later president and vice chairman of the Ritz-Carlton. He was the visionary who created and executed the standard of “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”

Under Schulze, Ritz-Carlton won two Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards (the only hotel company to win) and routinely was ranked in trade publications as the best hotel company in the world.

Surely he and his new company, Atlanta-based West Paces Hotel Group LLC, would surface as one of the final front-runners to redevelop the Colony.

Unfortunately, the association board and its consultant this past Saturday announced that Schulze’s firm was no longer in the running. Nor was that of Longboat Key resident Manfred Welfonder. (See page 1A for the final four).

“Their proposals were excellent,” Rosen, CEO of Horwath HTL, said Monday of Schulze and Welfonder.
But even after intense negotiations with all six finalists, Rosen said, Schulze’s group was unable to propose an offer for the Colony’s unit owners as attractive as those proposed by the final four.

Asked whether Klauber’s connections with any of the finalists influenced their selection, Rosen said no. “From an integrity standpoint,” Rosen said, “West Paces and Welfonder were outstanding. The Final Four are significantly better than what they offered the unit owners.”

He described the Final-Four selection as a blind analysis by the association’s board members. Rosen gave them the names of the six finalists, and then handed them six proposals that did not identify the names behind the proposals. Schulze’s West Paces Hotel Group didn’t make the cut.

This is unfortunate. From the standpoint of assuring Longboat Key that the next Colony would be reborn as another jewel, Schulze’s group would have assured that.

Schulze is the consummate hotel man. It is in his blood. In a recent interview at his Atlanta office, he recalled knowing at age 11 in his native Germany that he wanted to be in the hotel business — even though neither he nor his parents had ever stayed at a hotel.

When Schulze was 14, his parents reluctantly sent him to a hotel boarding school to learn the business.

His first job was that of a busboy at a small German resort and spa that catered to elite customers. Schulze remembers working such long hours that he would go home at the end of the day with his feet bleeding.

But he became passionately hooked on the business because of one man — the resort’s headwaiter, Karl Zeitler. “He was world-class excellence,” Schulze recalls. “When he walked into the room, you knew it.

The guests thought he was the most important person in the room. He told us, ‘Don’t be jealous of the guests. You are there to serve.’ He came to be excellent and not to work.”

Schulze has indelible memories of Zeitler and his teachings. “He taught us the mystique and beauty of the industry,” he says. “If you create excellence, you are just as respected. If you are not excellent, you are a servant.”

Schulze left the Ritz-Carlton on a Friday in 2002, thinking he was ready to retire after 45 years in the hotel/resort business. The following Monday he began looking for office space. “I said, ‘I want to do it again.’”

But this time, he wanted to prove whether a hotel could reach the Holy Grail — whether every guest could indeed be treated as an individual and that the hotel could cater to her every need — the way Karl Zeitler catered to the needs of “Mrs. Noll.” She was a regular at the German resort where Schulze started. She wrote letters to Zeitler explaining exactly what meals she wanted on what days, the types of flowers on her table and how many chairs for guests.

Schulze’s vision for his next venture was that of the hotel that truly delivered on what the research showed — that hotel guests, deep down, “want it my way.”

Bob Workman, a long-time Schulze associate and vice president in charge of operations at Ritz-Carlton, left his job there and joined Schulze without pay. He wanted in on Schulze’s new venture.

Since then, Schulze, Workman and a half-dozen others who left Ritz-Carlton, have created two new ultra-luxury-resort hotel brands — Capella and Solis — with eight resorts around the world. They also operate eight independent, high-luxury resorts worldwide. Altogether, the company has attracted more than $1 billion in investment capital and has more than $3.5 billion worth of hotel/condo properties under management or in development in 14 countries.

A signature of their hotels’ service is to call every guest before he arrives to learn his specific needs — so everything is ready when the guest arrives. “If he likes to rollerblade,” Schulze said, “we’ll have rollerblades waiting for him.”

Schulze’s West Paces Hotel Group had planned to develop one of its Solis resorts on Sunny Isles near Bal Harbour on Miami Beach, but the developer’s financing has stalled, leaving Schulze still interested in locating one of his resorts in Florida. Asked whether Longboat Key would fit his model, Schulze said:

“Absolutely, we’d love to be there. Longboat Key is a name.”

Alas, at this point, Schulze’s desires to be on Longboat rejuvenating the Colony appear to have ended.

It’s complicated. Imagine the scenario: 232 Colony unit owners, each with his own desires (to keep or sell his unit; perhaps willing to invest some money or none at all; and wanting free use of his unit for a set time); add to that the desires of Klauber, the three mortgage holders foreclosing on him and a bankruptcy court trustee. Now overlay the criteria of the financiers who will put up the equity to redevelop the Colony on top of the business criteria of the developer and future resort operators. Somehow, all of these desires must come in alignment.

Schulze’s group apparently was unable to match its criteria with those of the unit owners’ board.
With Schulze out, that leaves two other executives’ names among the Final Four who have the hotel/resort business imbedded in their DNA. They are John Ayres Jr. and Lee R. Weeks, founders of Naples-based Coral Hospitality.

Like Schulze, they are hotel people. Weeks at one time worked at the Ritz-Carlton, Naples. He and Ayres have been almost life-long hotel managers and operators. Since 1988, they have assembled an impressive stable of luxury resorts, clubs and residential communities that they manage in the states, the Bahamas and West Indies. They have what it takes.

But they are proteges, not Schulze, the standard-bearer of luxury and excellence.