The hotel was closed nearly three months earlier than planned--this past October--due to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The hotel chain had opened the 193-room Ritz-Carlton Boston Common on Sept. 5. "It didn't make sense to have two hotels operating then," John Rolfs, the general manager of Ritz-Carlton Hotels of Boston, tells GlobeSt.com.
When the 75-year old hotel opens it will have three rooms less than it did when it closed--272--a new facade, new water pipes, refurbished guest rooms, and a new Dining Room, which had been shut down a year before the hotel closed.
The hotel occupancy rates for this area decreased 15.7% from the fourth quarter of 2000 to the fourth quarter of 2001, according to figures compiled by Torto Wheaton Research. The number of occupied rooms decreased 17% in that time period. But Rolfs insists that he is not worried. He points out that Ritz-Carlton Boston Common had a 70% occupancy rate last month. "We think it'll come back," he says, referring to the hotel market. "Businesses are starting to realize that you have to travel again."
Rolfs says that while the leisure market has not picked up, he is starting to see the business market return to his hotels. "By October, things will be back to normal," he predicts. Rolfs also notes that the Ritz Carlton Boston is so different in character than its sister hotel that there is room in the market for both. He dismisses reports that the Ritz Carlton Boston was not going to reopen as a hotel but would instead be converted to condominiums. "At no time did we ever consider that," he says.
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