The aura of worldly sophistication that greets visitors to Southwest Florida's high-end resorts is created not only by opulent décor and the well-traveled, multilingual guests who fill the rooms, tee up on the golf courses and luxuriate in the spas. It comes also from a carefully chosen staff. Increasingly, the people who work in the region's upscale resorts-from bellhops and housekeepers to managers-hail from countries around the globe.

Conversations harmonize in a chorus of accents, and tags pinned to staff uniforms introduce each friendly, respectful, highly trained employee by name and by home country. Especially during the busy seasonal months, staff rosters at the area's top resorts include employees from South Africa to Poland, from Brazil to Romania, and from the Mascarene Islands to East Asia.

High standards and low unemployment rates have pushed resorts to cast recruiting nets far and wide. Guests expect attentive service from friendly, articulate, conscientious staff members who will take care of any needs-and be able to communicate in English. In short, they expect top-tier treatment equal to the surroundings and amenities for which they are paying.

"The luxury business is about creating experiences for the customer or guest-certainly not just meeting needs," says Sherie Brezina, associate professor and director of Florida Gulf Coast University's Resort and Hospitality Management program. "The employee must be seasoned, skilled and empowered to make whatever decision is needed on the spot to assure the customer is not only happy with the service, but wowed."

At Your Service

Finding the right people is essential to maintaining a property's reputation.

The quality of its employees is what sets the Ritz-Carlton apart, says Bruce Seigel, director of sales and marketing for both Ritz-Carlton properties in Naples. Hiring focuses less on a person's skills than on such "innate abilities" and characteristics as warmth and friendliness.

"The ability to bake bread or make soup-we can teach that," he says.

The two Ritz-Carltons in Naples, which employ about 1,500, have the advantage of an internationally known name that attracts the cream of the crop and can draw from other Ritz properties, he says. They also look overseas for qualified employees.

"We have over 50 countries represented on our year-round workforce," says Seigel, who describes the seasonal workforce as "a small fraction" of the total. "Our customers are global; therefore the ladies and gentlemen they interact with reflect our customer base," he says in the Ritz tradition of referring to staff as ladies and gentlemen.

But there are many other reasons for overseas recruiting.

With unemployment rates in Collier and Lee counties lingering for the past several years around 3 percent, compared with 4 to 5 percent nationally, and more competitors for good service workers, the pool of qualified people has dwindled to a puddle. The prohibitive cost of housing in parts of Southwest Florida adds to that problem.

"We simply do not have the thousands of extra workers that are needed and willing to work housekeeping, wait staff, front desk, kitchen, recreation and maintenance positions in our area's resorts, hotels, restaurants and private clubs during season," Brezina says.

The Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort & Spa has an additional staffing challenge: its location. As more hotels, restaurants and retailers crop up in Fort Myers and Naples, applications to the Bonita Springs resort are down, says Lealla Stoutenburg, human resources director for the Hyatt.

"There's such a saturation of hotels in Naples that, if you want to work for hotel, you don't have to commute," Stoutenberg says.

Going Global

The Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt and others work through international recruiting agencies to find candidates around the world and import employees under temporary work visas. Visas lasting from seven months to a year and a half allow resorts to train staff for more advanced positions. Seasonal visas, up to about six months, help them fill such positions as housekeeping and wait staff.

In March, less than 20 percent of the Hyatt's staff of 619 was international, and all of those were seasonal workers. The employee count drops to about 500 out of season-season stretches from December through July for the Hyatt, due to its substantial group business.

About three years ago, it became apparent at Sanibel Harbour Resort & Spa that additional retail, restaurant and resort businesses were ratcheting up competition for qualified staff, and the resort's overtime costs were topping out.

"Everyone was dipping into the same talent pool," says managing director Brian Holly.

This season, it joined other resorts in recruiting overseas, and hired 82 English-speaking students from Peru for a five-month stay during high season."It's not easy to set this up, because you have to provide housing," says Holly. "We have 21 apartments, and we have to transport these employees to the resort." But the hassle is worth it, he says, because they work in such areas as banquet setup and housekeeping-positions that are difficult to fill locally.

The Naples Beach Hotel brings in workers from Jamaica, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and this year, Poland. Nearly one third of its staff members were here on seasonal work permits this year, according to Patsy Carbone, the hotel's director of human resources and an adjunct faculty member of the FGCU hospitality program.

Hiring internationally isn't without risk. Recruiters from the Ritz-Carlton travel to the far corners of the globe to meet in person with job candidates, and like the Ritz, the Hyatt minimizes risk by maintaining high employment standards, including drug and background screening.

"The same requirements we have locally, we have internationally," Stoutenburg says. "We spend a lot doing pre-employment testing."

Depending on the position, new employees go through two to three days' training-classroom, computer, and one-on-one-for less guest-oriented positions, and up to three or four weeks for positions with a high level of interaction with guests.

Sanibel Harbour has had a training director on staff for about 12 years who works intensively with new staff members. A training center allows them to learn and polish skills before they're "on the front lines," Holly says. "You've got to have a major commitment to training."

With workers from other countries, that includes living skills, such as opening a bank account.

Homegrown Staff

Importing staff is one solution. Another is growing a qualified workforce locally, which is happening through FGCU's Resort and Hospitality Management program. It's getting a lot of support from local resorts, including the Hyatt, which has interns from the program year-round, Stoutenburg says.

Sanibel Harbour's Holly was one of the program's initiators. "We met five years ago with the board at FGCU and helped design and implement their hospitality school," he says. "It was our charge to put it together."

Organizers and advisors visited hospitality management programs throughout the state and beyond to assess curricula. "We kept saying: If we get this program implemented, we want it to be a full, well-rounded resort and hospitality school, not just basic accounting and sales and marketing, but also spa and wellness management, golf course management, etc.," he says.

The degree program is now in its third year. (The annual Wanderlust fundraiser for the program will be April 26 at the Ritz-Carlton Beach Resort.) There were 13 students three years ago; now there are about 300, and they all have to perform 1,600 hours of internships. Already there are success stories from the program, including two students who have moved into management ranks, Holly says.

Sanibel Harbour has typically had to recruit outside of the region for mid- and upper-management positions. "I want to have these positions taken by people right here in our community," Holly says.

The Payoff

Hiring workers from other countries makes sense financially for luxury resorts, in spite of the expense of recruiting internationally.

Resorts don't get a break on labor costs; they must pay workers at least the "prevailing wage," a minimum amount set by the state Department of Labor for each position. Several say their wages exceed those standards. Most workers, however, foot their own travel expenses.

Why do they go to the trouble and expense of obtaining visas and traveling to Southwest Florida for relatively low-paying jobs?

"There's no work in their home," says Carbone. "In Jamaica, for example, there might be one job and three people splitting the job for $2 to $3 per hour, so to make $8 to $10 per hour is a lot of money."

Foreign employees of Naples Beach Hotel pay roughly $125 per week for furnished, shared housing and transportation to work. "I have heard them say their plan is to send half their wages home," says Carbone. "Whoever is home will often use the money to build a room onto their house."

In addition to hiring from the FGCU program, the Naples Beach Hotel works with the extern program from Culinary Institute of America in New York and from Johnson and Wales, says resort president Mike Watkins. But the overseas labor force is critical, he adds.

"We would be out of business without these workers," says Watkins. "It works out well for us, and is certainly great for the employees who come from these countries and need this employment."