Joel Montalvo
Corporate Food and Beverage Director
Joel Montalvo has more than four decades of experience in food and beverage serving at some of the finest properties in the world including the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino Las Vegas, Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana and several Forbes Five-Star rated properties including Hotel Bel-Air, Ritz Carlton Chicago (a Four Seasons Hotel), The Resort at Pelican Hill, and Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich, Switzerland.
Dolder Grand is a fairy tale castle nestled in the Swiss Alps overlooking Zurich and has always been known as one of the best hotels in Europe. Fortunate to be the first American to complete a Stagiaire de Service at the legendary hotel, Joel learned a tremendous amount about the gastronomic world while trained weekly by the Certified Maitre d’ Hotel and biweekly on European wines.
When arriving in the United States from Switzerland, numerous hotels hired Joel to fully elevate their service, rewrite their manuals, and retrain the staff. E.G. - The Formal Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton Chicago, was one of the best dining rooms in the country that regularly hosted influential clients. Joel was assigned to rewrite the full-service manual, create sequences of services, and retrain the entire staff on service, Aperitifs, Digestifs, and Wine (Representative of the Wine Committee).
One of Joel’s most distinct opportunities was being selected as part of the Senior Management Opening Team serving as the Director of Events and Banquet Services for The Resort at Pelican Hill. Daily duties included writing extensive and meticulous manuals, interviewing, and as a team to develop a six-star hotel management style.
At the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Joel was hired to assist in opening a new 100,000 sq. ft. convention center addition to the hotel and casino. The establishment ultimately expanded to over 160,000 sq.ft. of event space and became the 8th largest convention casino hotel in the world, new home of “The World Series of Poker,” and one of the most legendary casinos. Once the addition opened, Joel’s team had the task of launching the new World Series of Poker on an immense world scale. He created and devised a lead waiter system to handle a large amount of additional convention space and executed some of the largest synchronized table service functions in the world. He also took pride in being the main designer of the team for all corporate VIP special events – action, bar & food station displays.
Hired by Regent International for their first property in the United States, The Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Joel’s first immense assignment was to inventory every bottle of wine documenting detailed information necessary from each label to write a worthy Wine Spectator “Grand Award Wine List.” When the Regent took over the hotel it had one of the most elaborate wine cellars, housing some of the rarest and most expensive wines in the world, to which Joel created a wine list from scratch utilizing the current inventory and won the “Grand Award” again for the hotel. Within 1½ years, Joel took over banquet operations and rewrote all the manuals and sequence of services for every position, reorganized and retrained supervision, certified all waiters to a five-star level, created a new posh buffet/bar design scheme, and developed the first off-premise catering operation (which served Tiffany’s, Bvlgari, the Hollywood Bowl, the Petersen Automotive Museum, etc.). Joel also wrote, designed, and executed all of the training with custom exams to develop staff retention.. The Regent Beverly Wilshire was the only hotel in the country to provide French Silver Service as a standard for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Joel was brought on board at the Hotel Bel-Air (rated the Number #1 Hotel in the Country by Condé Nast Magazine}, to restructure the entire purchasing department including migrating from perpetual to a computer software accounting/purchasing system. He also upgraded and rewrote the wine list and won the Wine Spectator “Best Award of Excellence.” As the Certified Sommelier of The Bel-Air, Lloyds of London Commissioned him to present exemplary Californian wine of his choice to the Commander of The Royal Yacht Britannia.
Joel joined Dora Hotel Company in 2021 as the Corporate Food and Beverage Director.