Page 78 - The New Gold Standard

PRINCIPLE 1: DEFINE AND REFINE
Ritz-Carlton, Powerscourt; it’s not an American hotel type simply
planted in a beautiful location in Ireland; it’s truly Ritz-Carlton,
but authentically Irish in its essence and its ambience. Ulti-
mately it comes down to continuing to ensure that a major
corporation can deliver consistent brand excellence while offer-
ing enough freedom at the property level to allow each hotel to
blend with its environment and adapt itself to the market in
which it is placed.”
President Simon Cooper acknowledges that at times efforts
to balance the competing needs of communities, owners, and
guests can lead to conservative approaches at creating otherwise
excellent product offerings. He recalls, “Not that long ago, I
signed off on a design for the premier restaurant that was to
appear in the hotel we opened in Dallas, Texas, in 2007. My
team and I authorized a restaurant that looked like a typical
Ritz-Carlton dining room—something you would recognize
from five years ago. It had the upholstered chairs, the luxurious
tablecloths, and all the fine finishes. It was also a nice continua-
tion of the design of the hotel. It was quite traditional, well
done, very elegant, sophisticated, and placed in a large physical
space. It would have served all the stakeholders well. But then
through fortune, Chef Dean Fearing came along and divulged
that he was leaving the esteemed restaurant at the Mansion on
Turtle Creek. Here we had the best-known chef in town offer-
ing to work with us to make that restaurant more relevant to the
changing customer and to the community.
“Dean’s restaurant turned out to be a huge departure from
what my team and I originally approved. It was a departure for
all the right reasons. You take an incredible, recognized chef in
the community, a genuinely animated individual who has put his
heart and soul into designing the restaurant, and you have what
I would call a destination restaurant today.” That destination in-
cludes a menu of elevated American cuisine like chicken-fried
Maine lobster or garlic-basted pheasant, an inviting Rattlesnake

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