Hyatt Regency Coconut Point

“We don’t have many stay-and-play resorts here in Southwest Florida,” Pass says. “For all the courses we have here, they’re mostly private courses, and public courses get filled up really quick, so I’m sure they’ll market that rather heavily throughout the country and in Europe. The Hyatt has a worldwide marketing plan, so it will attract people from all over the world.”

Enough Business to Go Around

In spite of the competition, experts suggest that the new resort will simply increase the number of visitors in Southwest Florida.

“There’s enough new business for them,” says R. Scott Cameron, CCIM, president of Cameron Real Estate Services and former chairman of the Economic Development Council of Collier County. “We now have two Ritz-Carltons in Naples, so obviously Ritz-Carlton wasn’t worried about another facility drawing down the amount of business they get at the beach facility. I have to defer to them and presume they’ve done some market studies and found that, ‘Geez, there’s enough business here for one more.’”

“It’s not going to divert them from Naples. It’s opening up additional opportunities,” Timmerman says. A number of “boutique hotels” have opened in the area, such as the Trianon Center, catering to the business executive, which some prefer. “But when it comes to resort-quality, world-class hotels, we really don’t have that many,” he says, adding that the scarcity keeps demand high.

Watermeier believes that some of those who already visit the area might try the new hotel for a change, but it works both ways, she says. Much of the Hyatt’s business is already established in that corporations, associations and industries regularly hold conventions at various Hyatt hotels. The new Hyatt already has bookings through the rest of 2001, and several organizations and corporations are eyeing it for 2002 and 2003.

“Some of the major corporations will go from Hyatt to Hyatt in different parts of the country, so I think we’re going to see some new, high-level corporate and business activity in our marketplace coming to this Hyatt,” she says.

That’s the mindset of Hyatt officials, too. “You’ve got a hotel like the Hyatt that’s coming into an area that’s very familiar with our customers,” Schlosser says. “For so long, you had our competitors, The Registry and The Ritz-Carlton, here in Naples and our customers have been asking Hyatt to put product here. Now we are, and with the phenomenal space we have and the outdoor space and the features and amenities the entire property has to offer, it makes it very easy for our customers to want to come to our hotel.”

“We have a heck of a reservation distribution system and we have a heck of a clientele already,” says Cabrera. “We have a big, big resort clientele that visit all the Hyatt resorts.” Because of that, much of the competition is not even local, as Cabrera expects that the hotel will compete with other Hyatt properties, such as the Grand Cypress in Orlando, a Hyatt golf resort. “I’ll be competing with them for business. I’ll compete with the Hyatt resorts we have in Puerto Rico,” says Cabrera, who was chairman of the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau. That area, he says, loses a lot of major convention business to Southwest Florida.

“I don’t think we’re just going to take the pie that exists and slice it one more way,” he says. “When there are a lot of hotels, you should only add more if you’re going to bring more to the table and not just take the same and have everybody fight for it, because then you get into price wars and that’s the last thing you want to do. That doesn’t help anybody.”

Can the Labor Force Support Another Hotel?

The competition for good employees, though, might be a different story. The Hyatt will employ some 500 to 600 people to begin with. When the Hyatt’s time-share project — a partnership with WCI that will feature a golf course — is complete in a few years, that number will increase, Cabrera says.

A few key positions were filled internally. Most managers were hired through an online system, so applicants, including those already with the corporation, came from all over. “Response for all management positions has been unbelievable, wildly exceeding expectation,” he says. Most of the line workers were hired locally, largely through job fairs the Hyatt staged during the summer.

There are differing points of view about how the Hyatt will affect the labor force, as hoteliers are already experiencing a shortage of hotel staff. Some believe that the Hyatt will give employees at the economy hotels and less expensive resorts a chance to move up the career ladder. “It’s an opportunity for someone who’s been working at a full-service brand hotel to work for a top brand hotel,” D’Alessandro says.

Others wonder how easy it will be in a market that’s already starved for a good labor force. “They’re going to have to be creative to draw people in,” says Pass. “You see people giving sign-on bonuses and offering bonuses for current employees to bring in another employee. People that employ a lot of people are getting very creative on what they can do to get quality employees.”

The challenge is hardly new. When The Ritz-Carlton, Naples, opened in the mid-1980s, it was just a few months before The Registry opened. “We had a total shortage of employees then,” Cameron says. “The Ritz loaned them employees to help open the hotel. It was just a good neighbor gesture from one world-class organization to another.”

Cabrera faced a similar situation at a hotel in Aruba, where government restrictions on imported labor means unemployment is close to nil. “There were hotels that didn’t operate restaurant outlets because there was no staff,” he says. So the Hyatt teamed up with the hotel next door, sharing employees, even for big events such as Christmas parties. But the hotel never raided the other for employees and Cabrera says there is no intention of doing so here. “Obviously employees are free to pick and choose, but we would never raid one another,” he says. “We want to be good neighbors.”

But Cameron can see a case where several of the people that work in the world-class hotels in Naples perhaps live in Lee County and will look for a job closer to home. “It’s certainly going to be a competitive market,” he says. With the shortage of affordable housing in the Bonita-Estero area, Timmerman says that it’s likely that much of the staff will commute from farther north in Lee County.

“I’ve learned that here, come season, it gets very competitive for employees,” Cabrera says. “We have other markets that are highly seasonal … like Vail, that’s a very tough labor market. It’s a similar type thing, but it’s a successful resort, the hotel gives very good benefits, employees make plenty of money — that’s kind of what drives the whole thing.”

Adding Value to the Community

Of course, drawing visitors to the Estero area is likely to boost other businesses in the area, from the retailers and restaurants that visitors patronize, to the real estate, contractors and other services that new residents and regular visitors demand, including more cultural activities. The Hyatt, Cameron points out, could well lay the foundation for the type of community it will be.

“I think a Hyatt in Estero is probably a great thing to happen to Estero,” he says. “Estero was the beneficiary of having the tenth state university and look at the impact that that has had. But a university doesn’t necessarily bring the high-end development and now the Hyatt will be another piece of the puzzle that hopefully can round out the quality of the future of that area,” he says, pausing. “Or maybe I should say the future of the quality of that area.”

Jill Tyrer is a freelance writer and editor.