A multi-phased, 18-month makeover of the 1,335-unit Caribe Royale Orlando wrapped up recently with the renovation of 1,215 one-bedroom suites. Each one features separate living room and bedroom areas (in photo) along with a dedicated workspace to accommodate the rising number of remote-work and extended-stay travelers. The other 120 guest units on property are recently refreshed two-bedroom suites.
The first phase of the $127 million upgrade of the property was completed in summer 2021, when the 50,000-square-foot Palms Ballroom (in photo)—the largest of four ballrooms on property—opened, bringing the total amount of indoor meeting space to 220,000 square feet. Since then, the resort has rolled out a redesigned lobby and adjacent public spaces, a ground-floor lounge, a two-level sports bar, and a new private dining space at its upscale on-site restaurant, The Venetian Chop House.
One other upgrade element that was aimed at satisfying the larger number of meeting clients the resort expects to host: Cat 6 connections—which allow for data-transmission speeds of 1 Gigabit (1,000 Mbps) per second—were installed in all guest units along with more than 600 WiFi access points installed across the property. Regarding the latter, “we asked meeting planners what they were looking for as we programmed our meeting space and our technology offerings,” says Amaury Piedra, managing director of the resort. “When we first began the renovation conversation, we recognized that we would need stronger, faster WiFi in all the public areas, and especially within the meeting space.”
Piedra recently told Hotel News Now that the goal is to have about 65 percent of the property’s business come from groups. “While we will still do SMERF [social, military, educational, religious, and fraternal] groups, we're now more heavily slanted to corporate and association groups because of the new [lodging] product and the new ballroom.”
Located next door to the Marriott Orlando World Center and one mile from Disney World, the Caribe Royale Orlando is 17 miles from Orlando International Airport, a 25-minute drive.
