Fairmont Pacific Rim, Coast Coal Harbour, Pinnacle hotels work on final touches
Bruce Constantineau
Sun
Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel general manager Randy Zupanski stands in front of his new downtown Vancouver hotel, scheduled to open later this month even though painting of the exterior continues. Three Vancouver-area hotels are scrambling to open in time for the 2010 Olympics. Photograph by: Les Bazso, PNG, Vancouver Sun
Walk by the luxurious Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel set to open soon near Canada Place and you’d swear the late-January-opening deadline is preposterous.
Construction workers are still hard at it. Hotel supplies and operating equipment have to be moved in. A water feature near the main entrance still has to be finished.
But hotel general manager Randy Zupanski insists the 377-room property will indeed open by the end of this month. It has to. Its first Olympic guests arrive in early February and the hotel is fully booked during the 17-day Games period.
“Every hotel opening is the same,” Zupanski said in an interview. “Things get pushed right to the wire.”
The Fairmont Pacific Rim is one of three brand new hotels scurrying now to put the finishing touches on their properties before opening in time to meet their Olympic commitments.
The 220-room Coast Coal Harbour Hotel opens at 1180 West Hastings on Jan. 15, the same opening date as the 105-room Pinnacle Hotel at the Pier near Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver.
All will be bursting at the seams with Games visitors next month.
Zupanski said he has managed this kind of intense deadline pressure before and has no doubt the new hotel will deliver superb service to the Olympic sponsors and dignitaries scheduled to stay there.
He opened a hotel in Shanghai located inside an 80,000-seat stadium that was built for the 1997 Chinese National Games.
“So the first day we opened, we were full,” he said. “I’m not going to say it’s easy but if you have experienced people, you can deliver.”
More than 5,000 people applied for 350 jobs at the new Burrard-and-Canada-Place-Way property and workers are now training at the nearby Fairmont Waterfront hotel. Many experienced staff from other Fairmont properties have been brought in to work at the hotel during the busy Games period.
Zupanski said the hotel has been built to the highest standards and hopes it can achieve a coveted five-diamond rating one day from the influential American Automobile Association. The Sutton Place Hotel is the only Vancouver property with a five-diamond rating from the AAA.
Hotel features include a lobby lounge with a custom-designed, $225,000 Fazioli piano, a 15,000-square-foot spa/fitness centre, 42-inch LCD TVs in every room and 37 suites–including a 3,000-square-foot “presidential suite” on the 22nd floor.
The hotel occupies the first 22 floors of a 48-storey luxury condo project that commanded asking prices of about $2,300 a square foot. One buyer paid more than $15 million for a 6,000-square-foot penthouse suite.
Condo owners can use hotel offerings such as room service, valet parking, housekeeping service and a downtown car service that uses a fleet of BMWs.
Pinnacle Hotel at the Pier general manager Dale Dyck said his hotel is just about ready to welcome its first guests late next week.
“The rooms are all ready and decorated,” he said. “We’re just going through them one more time to look for nicks in the paint and that sort of thing before we put everything in its final position.”
Dyck said the mid-January opening should give his staff of 100 enough time to “kick the tires a bit and make sure everything works” before Olympic guests arrive early next month. About 20 per cent of the rooms have been set aside for Cultural Olympiad participants.
“We’re asking people to work at their peak performance while they’re really still in a learning curve — that’s the biggest challenge,” Dyck said.
But he stressed the slowing economy and rising unemployment rate meant the hotel was able to hire many “really qualified workers” so he expects they will meet that challenge.
Dyck said with the Olympics approaching, opening the hotel any later than mid-January was never an option.
“If we had been delayed, I don’t know what plan B would have been,” he said.
Coast Coal Harbour Hotel general manager Hans von Bloedau said rooms at the West Hastings property will be filled with various groups during the Olympics. He said there are both good and bad sides to opening a new hotel just before such a huge event.
“There’s a bit of competition for staff because everyone will be so busy,” von Bloedau said. “But there’s lots of excitement now so everyone is really geared up and that creates tremendous enthusiasm.”
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