Lender Deutsche Bank AG, which foreclosed on the 349-room hotel in 2009 and stopped it in May, has hired Dolce Hotels and Resorts to manage the hotel and reopen it in before time 2011 as a slightly fewer luxurious location.

The transition will move the hotel to a four-star property in the dolce brand from Ritz’s five-star category. Deutsche and Ritz, a unit of Marriott International Inc., mutually decided earlier this year to end Ritz’s management of the property, a person familiar with the discussion understood.

“The advantage of being in a four-star arena is you can really push up the service or push it down and stay your cost structure in line,” said Steve Rudnitsky, president and chief executive of Dolce, which manages 27 hotels globally. Dolce is mostly owned by Broad reach Capital Partners.

Shifting a struggling hotel to a slightly less luxurious brand is rare but not unprecedented. And it might happen more frequently in the next years as the U.S. market winnows the glut of luxury hotels built during the recent boom.

Earlier this year, Broadreach hired Hyatt Hotels Corp. to handle its Aviara resort in Carlsbad, Calif., replacing Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts as the property’s manager. Hyatt is operating the Aviara resort under its Park Hyatt brand, which arguably is a tad less distinguished than Four Seasons.

Dolce’s arrival could help Lake Las Vegas’ former Ritz property due to Dolce’s expertise in luring conferences and business groups, said Bruce Baltin, a senior vice president with hotel-industry consultant Colliers PKF Consulting in Los Angeles. Lake Las Vegas, a 3,600-acre development in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, long has struggled to survive partly because it is so far from the Las Vegas band.

Thus, Lake Las Vegas’ hotels rely on business groups gathering for meetings rather than tourists interested in the Strip. The other major hotel there, the Loews Lake Las Vegas, went through foreclosure last year but remains open. The Loews hotel even dropped the word “resort” from its name to improve entice business groups leery of the stigma of meeting at a luxury hotel.

“Dolce is big in the meeting market,” Mr. Baltin said. “That’s the segment that these Lake Las Vegas hotels really need to achieve something.”

The larger Lake Las Vegas expansion, which includes three 18-hole golf courses, a small casino that closed this year and 1,700 homes and condominiums, sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year after its developers defaulted on a $540 million loan. Deutsche foreclosed on the Ritz subsequent to it defaulted on a $103 million advance.