Farewell to the St. Regis Fort Lauderdale

St. Regis Fort Lauderdale

The St. Regis Fort Lauderdale Resort is being stripped of its coveted St. Regis name.

It appears that Starwood has decided to end its contract with Castillo Grand LLC, the owner of the St. Regis Fort Lauderdale Resort, effective August 10, 2008.  After months of talks and negotiation, it became evident there were several significant differences between the Castillo Grand and Starwood. 

This is quite unfortunate, as the St. Regis Fort Lauderdale is a young property that showed so much promise.  In its first year of operation, it was awarded Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best, Top 15 Hotels to Watch award as well as the Mobil Four-Star Award.  This year the hotel has been recognized as a Condé Nast Traveler Hot List Hotel.

One of only seven St. Regis hotels in North America, the resort was considered a symbol of Fort Lauderdale’s growing luxury hotel market, and some thought it had a shot to earn Mobil Travel Guide’s top 5-star rating, a designation bestowed on only 37 hotels last year.

St. Regis Fort Lauderdale

Starwood expects Castillo Grand to honor all of guests, customers, vendors and residence owners.  Starwood has pledged to work with Castillo Grand to ensure a smooth transition. Time will tell if the posh beachfront resort will be considered as exclusive when the name is yanked by Starwood Hotels & Resorts on Aug. 10.  An official public announcement is on Starwood’s St. Regis Fort Lauderdale site.

“We were excited that we were getting the state of Florida’s first St. Regis. … It was absolutely a big deal,” Nicki Grossman, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau, said Monday.

But a hotel by any other name will do as well, Grossman said.

“I don’t expect this property is going to change,” she said. “It was built to be an extremely high-end hotel.”

“This has nothing to do with the performance of the hotel,” said K.C. Cavanagh, a spokeswoman for Starwood, which operates four hotels in the city.

Some of the hotel’s 320 employees may be transferred to other Starwood hotels, and others may be kept by the new management company.

 

St. Regis Fort Lauderdale

St. Regis Fort Lauderdale

Source: Sun-Sentinal