RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — With its Ritz-Carlton Rancho Mirage recently reopening on a perch overlooking the Coachella Valley and the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa finishing a seven-year, $100 million upgrade on the valley floor seven miles away, Marriott International might seem to investing big bucks to compete against itself in this luxury playground of show business celebrities, tech entrepreneurs and business tycoons.
But talking with the hotels' operators and visiting the properties leaves a visitor with the conviction that the hotels' differences are substantial enough to make the largest U.S. hoteliers' luxe strategy for the Southern California subregion a sound one.
The 244-room Ritz-Carlton, with a phalanx of staff members greeting guests at the property's porte-cochere and an entrance that incudes golden onyx fixtures, walnut floors and an indoor cactus garden, aims squarely at the top of the luxury market.
Rebuilt from the ground up, the hotel includes three pools with 30 full-service cabanas, a 25,000-square-foot spa complex and 16 spa-adjacent condominiums that start at about 850 square feet each, not to mention about 330 staff members and management. (View a slideshow of images of some of the updates made by clicking here.)
With such amenities, the hotel is looking to get rates during the region's high season (approximately Thanksgiving to May) that start at three to four times the Coachella Valley's $140 a night average and top out at about $5,000 for its largest suites.
"This will be one of those places that will fill a niche that will allow people to have a quiet, relaxed environment where they can really recharge," said the hotel's general manager, Doug Watson, who estimated that the clientele will be about 60% leisure, 40% group. "Our market is not broad."
That leisure/group guest ratio is flipped at the JW Marriott, whose entrance is no less impressive. The lobby, which rises four levels above the main entrance, also drops three levels below it to accommodate a boat dock for the half-dozen motorized "gondolas" that ferry guests around the hotel's 18-acre lake.
And whereas the Ritz-Carlton whispers "posh," the JW shouts "scale," as its 884 rooms and its 210,000-square-foot footprint both represent the Coachella Valley's largest. The property also has two 18-hole championship golf courses, four restaurants, two bars, a sushi bar and a full-service Starbucks in its lobby.
"Our entire resort is similar to a cruise ship, in that you can do it all once you're here," said K.C. Kinsey, the hotel's director of sales and marketing.
The hotels' differences are further demarcated by their histories. The JW Marriott has remained open and under the same flag since its 1987 debut and has been owned by Host Hotels since 1997. Even its renovation process has been steady, starting in 2007 with the soaring lobby, working its way to the guestrooms in 2011, the meetings space the following year and its vast outdoor areas this year.
The Ritz-Carlton has followed a rockier path. It opened in 1988 as the seventh under the luxury brand, was reflagged as the Lodge at Rancho Mirage in 2001, was sold in 2005 and closed a year later for an overhaul. The goal was to reopen the property as a Ritz-Carlton in 2010, but after three years of construction work, the project was halted in 2009 after the bursting of the housing bubble and the impact it had on Lehman Brothers, the hotel's financier.
The hotel is now owned by California-based Kam Sang Corp., Argentina-based Magna RE and Miami-based Gencom. Watson declined to say how much was spent rebuilding the property, which reopened May 15 as the 86th under the Ritz flag.
Differences aside, both hotels are banking on a high-end tourism resurgence to the Coachella Valley, whose population jumps from about a half-million people to more than double that during high season and even further during annual spring events such as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Having shed its reputation as a vacation spot primarily for families and retirees, the desert today is attracting a larger contingent of millennials, while Palm Springs in particular has become a hot spot for LGBT visitors lured by its festivals, midcentury architecture and burgeoning nightlife. As a result, the region's hotel revenue per available room has jumped about 20% during the past two years
Of course, such tourism growth has attracted more competition from a boutique and lifestyle hotel contingent. The Ace Hotel Palm Springs opened in 2009, while the area's first Hard Rock Hotel opened last fall. A Kimpton hotel will open in Palm Springs next year.
Watson, a former Marriott vice president who oversaw the company's Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott and Renaissance properties in Southern California, said he welcomed the less formal competition.
"If the development of these hotels can make the Palm Springs desert a more delightful place to experience, that only broadens the proposition for us," he said.
As for overcrowding the luxury sector, both Watson and Kinsey, who estimated JW's high-season rates in the high $200 a night range, downplayed the possibility of cannibalization.
"On the group side, we'll have some parity, but I see [the reopened Ritz-Carlton] as more of a complement," Kinsey said, noting that the hotel will help lure convention groups with upper-management types looking for a slightly more refined vibe. "It's a wonderful amenity to have back here in our destination."
Follow Danny King on Twitter @dktravelweekly.