Word: ritzes
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...Sort of Hobby. Nowadays, the fully-booked Ritz is as fashionable as ever-but not because of its prices ($4 to $20 a day). Even at that, the hotel manages to make a "reasonable" annual profit (which is never announced by the private ownership), maintaining a record that has been unbroken except for two years during the depressed...
...partners for help. By lavish spending on gaudy entertainment (for one party, they flooded the main dining room, served dinner on gondolas to the music of imported Venetian gondoliers), they boomed the value of the stock to ?20 a share in three years. This and other triumphs prompted Ritz's millionaire friends to back his fondest dream-a hotel of his own in Paris, which would be "the summum of elegance." Ritz himself saw to it that the new hotel on the Place Vendôme was comparatively small (only 225 rooms), exquisitely furnished (mainly Louis Quinze and Empire...
Boas in the Bath. Within weeks after the Ritz opened in 1898, the world had become the guest of dapper César Ritz. His intense efforts to please his patrons led to a breakdown in 1911, death seven years later. After that, his personally trained assistants ("the Academicians") and Mimi ("counselor to the management") saw to it that the Ritz tradition was maintained. Though Ritz had had an active hand in London's Carlton and a dozen other big European hotels, and had less actively sponsored the tri-continental Ritz-Carlton group, no other hotel ever achieved...
...himself had to fetch live rabbits for the two boa constrictors she kept in her bathroom. Once the management had to insist that the Countess de Salverte move out because her pet lion had grown too big. To survive World War II, the Ritz had to knuckle to such boorish guests as Hermann Göring. It salved its conscience by wheedling more food from the Nazis than it needed, supplying a lower-priced restaurant for Frenchmen around the corner...
...owners want more. Last fortnight, Hotelman Conrad Hilton, combing Europe for possible links to add to his U.S. chain, was cold-shouldered when he asked if the Ritz could be bought. Said able Managing Director Claude Auzello: "Being a Ritz stockholder is a sort of hobby . . . The Ritz is an old tradition. It is not for sale...