Sanya Ritz offers unparalleled luxury

For Michel Goget, working on the tropical island of Sanya is a dream come true.

"It is great to work in such a beautiful area," says Goget, an American born in France who has been at the helm of The Ritz-Carlton Sanya since 2007, before it opened.

The Ritz-Carlton Sanya is the first Ritz-Carlton resort in China and an upper luxury resort in Yalong Bay. Three months after opening in April 2008, the 450-room property gained the No 1 position in Hainan in terms of average rates, occupancy and revenue per available room. It has retained this position ever since despite the fact that it is operating in an area with the largest concentration of global hotel brands in China.

"There's been a notable change over the past few years," Goget says, "In the past, customers tended to be older, but now more and more are in their 30s and 40s, and we have to adjust to anticipate their needs."

The hotel has always offered distinctive packages as well as spectacular infrastructure and attentive service.

In February, the hotel unveiled Uncle Martin's Secret Garden, an eco-friendly garden, to enable today's computer generation to have a more personal connection with nature, such as watching a hen and her chicks and picking tropical fruits, like mangos and papayas.

When it comes to romance, the hotel has Sanya's first oceanfront wedding chapel with breathtaking backdrops of the South China Sea. The hotel has a professionally trained "romance-ologist" and many surprises for the customers - prospective grooms could propose underwater with a ring inside a seashell or the hotel could transform the oceanfront chapel into a Catholic Church or Buddhist temple for a wedding. Goget says the hotel's wedding business has tripled over the past three years.