Thirty inches of snow falling within the 48 hours leading up to the Ritz-Carlton Highlands, Lake Tahoe’s grand opening didn’t stop the hotel and guests from celebrating the occasion in style.
The Ritz-Carlton Highlands took five years to come together and be built, and nothing was going to stop the luxurious hotel and excited guests from celebrating its grand opening with a bang, including 30 inches of freshly fall snow.
The new hotel features all of the ski and apres-ski amenities one could ask for, including ski-in, ski-out access, a spa with mountain views from the massage table, and fireplaces in every room. Restaurants at the Ritz brand hotels have earned a reputation for elegant cuisine served up by celebrity chefs and this Lake Tahoe Ritz is no exception, with the renowned Traci des Jardins from San Francisco at the helm.
The hotel is built as a series of linked pavilions housing 170 guest rooms and 16 suites that are all fitted with gas fireplaces to warm your toes at the end of the night. Designed by Hornberger and Worstell, the hotel elegantly blend into the hillside of its mid-mountain locale at the Northstar-at-Tahoe ski resort. To add even more icing to this snowy cake, there are also 23 private Ritz-Carlton Residences and 25 Ritz-Carlton Club fractional ownership units, all which ensure that the hotel and Lake Tahoe itself are year-round destinations.The hotel is pedestrian-friendly and includes underground parking and a requisite Gondola which takes guests down to the Village-at-Northstar.
The Ritz-Carlton Club component of the hotel opens on December 18, and will feature 25 two-,three-, and four-bedroom club residences, with prices starting in the low $100,000s.
For the others, a fantastic mountain-view guest room starts at $349 a night over the weekend, and with a $25 daily resort fee, these rooms come with wired or WiFi internet access, local and toll-free calls, a daily newspaper, shuttle or Gondola rides, and access to the fitness center, spa, and pool.
Fun fact about the construction of the hotel; it is reported that The Ritz-Carlton Highlands created approximately 350 jobs in Northern California over the past year, an additional component to the hotel that certainly deserves some wintery-wonderland praise.
