Business
Reggie Dominique makes Ritz career
By St Louis Business
Mar 6, 2006, 21:51

The family roots of Reggie Dominique, the 35-year-old head of marketing and sales for the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton, are in Haiti, from which island nation his aristocrat parents and grandparents were exiled by the infamous Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. But Dominique was born, raised and did his hotel apprenticeship in Southern California.

"A buddy of mine was parking cars at the Beverly Hills Hotel, making some money, so I applied for a job at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Ray, and I've been with the company ever since," Dominique said.

He got into business travel sales a year or so after starting with the company's Marina Del Ray facility in 1994, then into group sales there, and was sales manager at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel and Spa in Pasadena, Calif., when he made the move to St. Louis. That was about six months ago. He now oversees a sales and marketing budget of more than $30 million and a staff of 15.

He said his career path, if all goes well, would put him in a big resort facility or a hotel in a top-tier city such as New York or Washington, D.C., as sales/marketing manager, and then he would hope to become a hotel manager. His current boss at the Clayton facility, General Manager Brad Cance, seems to think all of that will happen.

"Reggie is as passionate as they come," Cance said. "What he's doing is bringing customers, bringing companies, bringing clients in from outside of this region who have never been here, and never even thought of being here."

Although he has been in St. Louis for a relatively short time, Dominique has lent his marketing and awareness-raising talents to a number of charities, including the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, American Liver Foundation and Children's Hospital.

He and his wife, Patty, have two children.

John Terry is a St. Louis freelance writer