24 years ago, Rosario Melina Forla packed her bags and left for Buenos Aires to complete her studies in hospitality. Two years later, They would offer him to leave the country for the first time to train, the chosen destination was Los Cabos, in Baja California. He told his family that He would be gone for a year, but almost two decades passed. At that time, he built a Itinerant life from hotel to hotel, working for different companies, leaving his expertise. Today he is the general manager of the new hotel that will open in the Caribbean, the Luxury Collection Resort & Spa of the Salterra brandlocated in the paradisiacal islands Turks and Caicos. And he was in Rosario this week visiting his family and took advantage of that step to do a call for those from Rosario who want to pursue a career in luxury hospitality.
The company he works for is called Jems Worldwile, owned by North American Michael Tibbets, which is a franchise of the multinational Marriott. After the pandemic, Melina received the proposal to go live on that Caribbean island to open a high-end hotel. In dialogue with Capital Businesses details that “one of the most beautiful things when you work in hospitality It is opening hotels because you have the opportunity to create something from scratch, it is a great satisfaction, I couldn’t let it pass. You can project the service standards, what your team is going to be like, give people opportunities.” The contact came to her because she had worked in the Cayman Islands for more than ten years where she had met with Jems Wordwile executives at events.
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This will be the pool with sea views of the new Salterra hotel.
Image courtesy of Salterra
Although it has already opened other hotels in the world, the truth is that this destination has its particularities. “I have never worked in such a challenging place and with such particular logistics,” he explains, referring to the fact that it is a very remote place. In the region where the hotel is located, South Caicos, Just over a thousand people live in an area of 21 square kilometers. Therefore, everything is yet to be done. A peculiarity is that in front of the hotel there was a salt mine which operated between 1700 and 1900. The Melina team’s proposal is to return to value it as one of the tourist attractions of the place.
Encourage Rosario residents to take on this new challenge
His idea of calling Rosario residents to go live in South Caicos has to do with what he wants give other people the opportunity to have a career in hospitality, just like it happened to her. Melina details that “the most beautiful part of this job is that from management you have the opportunity for the people who are part of the team to grow in their careers. Because someone made me grow, I can do the same for others.”
The meeting he organized on Tuesday at the Cairo bar was a success: There were 70 people interested in going to work in Salterra. “The meeting was a success, there were people with good level of English and I was able to identify people interested in the project. They were people who got involved in the conversation and then there were specific cases where I was able to guide them on the path to grow in the profession. Very diverse cases, from newly graduated people who want to be managers, or lifeguards who want to go to work on the island. People excited to have a possibility like this.”
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The view of what the hotel will look like when it is about to be launched in early 2025.
Image courtesy of Salterra
The truth is that they are looking to fill 239 positions, some are executive positions and others are smaller. The priority goes to the inhabitants of the island, although Melina assures that there are many positions for such a small population. Regarding the place where they would live, they are building a tower next to the hotel, under the name Aqua Employed Village, where they will be able to reside there with a very cheap rent. In his experience, These types of jobs are for people between 25 and 45 years old who want to live on the beach, outdoors, in a paradisiacal place, but with little development, where they can have the opportunity to work eight hours and save because in that place there is no there is where to spend. In fact, the company is thinking about building a minimarket so that employees can stock up.
luxury tourism
To have an idea of the target of the hotel that is about to open, The night in a standard room is close to US$1,200. The premiere is projected for February 2025, for which reservations are already open. In fact, the first one was made and it is for the penthouse which costs US$5,000 a night. Why is it such an exclusive destination? Very few people know about it, at the moment it cannot be reached by direct plane – although they are already negotiating with an airline to achieve this -, they usually choose it North Americans with very high purchasing power, seeking experiences different from what they know.
Melina explains it this way “luxury is defined by the experience that the guest has that exceeds their expectations. The idea is to provide a service so high that it even seems unreasonable.”. To close, tell a recent case. Although the hotel is not open yet, an American tourist who was on another island saw a video from Salterra showing a virgin site for fly fishing. The tourist wanted to do that experience with his son, so he contacted them to see the options. He rented a yacht, which costs approximately $5,000 per day, to get to the site of the future hotel and fished for three hours. Then he returned. They fulfilled her dream of taking his son to a unique place. “We do it for you,” Melina concludes when defining this type of service.
