BEHIND THE SCENES AT A 5 STAR RESORT ON THE MAYAN RIVIERA

The Grand Palladium is a 5 star mega-resort. A virtual small city carved out of rich mangroves and jungle. Situated over 2,000,000 square meters of land boasting 1554 guest rooms and 273 apartments for employees who live on site. Like any city the resort has the necessary infrastructure to maintain and facilitate this transient society of vacationers.

The Palladium Resort is owned and operated by a Spanish family under the branding of "Fiesta Hotel Group". Fiesta operates a number of hotels in Spain, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Italy as well. The family lives in Spain.

The Grand Palladium is comprised of four hotels; Grand Palladium Kantenah Resort & Spa, Colonial Resort & Spa, White Sand Resort & Spa and Riviera Resort & Spa & the Royal Suites. The Royal Suites are situated in the Riviera side and are the premium suites. The Kantenah and Colonial are joined together and share resources [kitchens, freezers, storage, offices, etc.]. The White Sand and Riviera do the same.

There is a Managing Director for the whole complex but not an Assistant General Manager. There is a Resident Manager for the Colonial/Kantenah and a Resident Manager for the White Sand/Riviera. Each one of the Resident Managers have two Assistants.

There are various managers/offices for each hotel overseeing operations such as housekeeping, restaurants, bars and grounds keeping. The entire facility shares some offices like Guest Services, Reservations, Accounting, Maintenance and Human Resources.

It takes almost one employee per room to efficiently operate the resort [.95 employees to be exact, this rate depends on the occupancy]. There is presently a drastic shortage of skilled workers in the Mayan Riviera affecting the operations of all hotels and attractions. There is also a building boom going with numerous reconstruction efforts underway still repairing things from last years devastating Hurricane Wilma. Employee turn-over is a constant problem as hotels compete for skilled staff.

If you wonder why there are so many foreign employees at hotels in Cancun/Mayan Riviera it is not because the hotels have some kind of bias against Mexican workers but that there is simply a shortage of even unskilled Mexican workers willing to be trained. Thus the hotels are forced to look off-shore for staff.

FEEDING THE HORDES OF STARVING VACATIONERS

Deliveries are made to the resort six days a week [no deliveries on Sunday]. There is one main warehouse located on the Kantenah side. This warehouse stores dry-goods and everything from stationery to new uniforms - think Costco/Sam's Club!

There is one shipping-receiving facility for the Kantenah/Colonial side and one for the White Sand/Riviera side. Produce and meats are shipped daily while dry-goods and alcohol are stocked in the main warehouse with smaller storage areas located throughout all hotels.

Meats are delivered in refrigerated trucks and immediately taken into freezers. Each specific meat group [fish, poultry, beef/pork] has its own freezer. Each piece of meat is shrink-wrapped in plastic from the meat factory and as soon as it arrives at the hotel it has a sticker with an arrival date placed on the package. Every single piece of meat is tagged with a sticker to identify its arrival date, to avoid expiration.

As meat is needed [on a daily basis] it is moved from one of 18 freezers operating at -18 degrees C to one of two thawing-out freezer which operates at -2 degrees C. After the meat is removed from the thawing freezer it is then unwrapped and taken through a three phase cleaning process. First it is washed, then rinsed then disinfected using a safe disinfecting agent. The meat is then taken to the appropriate kitchen for preparation.

Fruits and vegetables go through a similar procedure but are washed as soon as they are delivered to the hotel. Right at the entrance of the building in the shipping receiving zone is a room that all produce is unloaded to. Every piece of produce is washed, rinsed then disinfected before being taken to its cold storage locker. There are numerous cold storage lockers [freezers operating at refrigerator temperature] dividing up the fruits, vegetables, eggs and dairy products.

When produce is needed it is taken out of the storage units and taken to the cleaning room where it is washed, rinsed and disinfected again prior to use.

The rooms that the washing is done in are kept clean with constant disinfecting using a 50 ppm (50 part per million) chlorine cleaning solution. Knifes, when not in use are kept in disinfectant [iodine]. The food cleaning rooms and preparation rooms are inspected three times a day by the resort's inspectors. They must sign-off on the reporting form located in each room.

The inspector has a special tool that they rub around the room which can determine the germ/bacteria count of any given surface. If a particular surface does not meet the required specification in germ tolerance the room must be cleaned until it does.

Government agents inspect the facilities and reporting logs once a month.

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