A Commitment to Service

Five-stars usually belong to generals, and five diamonds may be better suited to contract bridge. but the really important stars and diamonds in Naples these days are those in the crown of the world-class Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Joseph Freni, its regional vice-president and general manager.

Under Freni's leadership, the Ritz-Carlton won the American Automobile Association's prestigious five-diamond award just three years after opening. Only eight or nine other hotels claim this distinctive award. The equally coveted five-star award came in December 1988 -- establishing the Ritz-Carlton as one of the premier resort hotels in the country.

Freni agrees: "For a hotel man to pull this off is like winning the Super Bowl two or three years in a row." Diamonds and stars go with the territory, however. The parent Ritz-Carlton Company has more five-diamond hotels than any of its competition, and their two five-star hotels are an unusually high number for a company their size.

An experienced hotel manager, but no expert in gourmet sauces or epicurean entrees, Freni's talents lie in the less arcane world of marketing, sales, and personnel management. While the Ritz-Carlton in Naples has a reputation for world-class cuisine and service, one of the key ingredients of its success has been a prodigious marketing and sales effort.

As vice-president of sales and marketing at corporate headquarters in Atlanta, Freni helped plan the development of the parent company's Florida entree in Naples --knowing that he wanted to be part of it. Before being asked to join the Ritz-Carlton Company in 1982, he had spent almost 20 years in the hotel business -- most recently managing the Bahia Mar Clarion Resort in Fort Lauderdale for the Omni organization.

An avowed workaholic since high school days in Washington D.C., the newly-appointed general manager knew that his job in Naples would be challenging. Although it seems preposterous now, some critics felt the Ritz-Carlton could not make a go of it in Naples. A well-known accounting firm, specializing in feasibility studies for new hotels, refused to do a study for this one -- on the grounds that it could not succeed and the study would be a waste of the client's money. The rationale: Naples was not large enough to absorb an additional 463 rooms,...