Publication Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2005
The best of the best
The best of the best
(April 13, 2005) New hotels promise state-of-the art luxury
Standing in the dusty concrete hallway, with the thrum of traffic on U.S. Highway 101 outside, Four Seasons Hotel marketing director Pamela Hild was doing her best to paint a picture of opulence the likes of which the area has never seen.
But six months before the scheduled opening, it takes imagination to see how the concrete-and-steel structure at University Circle in East Palo Alto will become the most refined accommodations to open on the Peninsula in years.
"Triple-paned windows," she said, standing by a floor-to-ceiling, tarp-covered gap on the third floor, just a few feet from where a glass window will be.
She pointed through a hole in the tarp to the view of trees across the highway to the east, and promised that landscaping would adorn the hotel side of 101 as well.
At $375 a night for the smallest room -- $2,500 for the presidential suite, if one comes with an entourage -- the Four Seasons will be the most expensive hotel in the area. That is, until the proposed Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park opens, likely in a few years.
What exactly does one get for the price?
All local luxury hotels, even those that charge about a third of the price, tout their attention to detail and service. But it's the unique amenities that Hild hopes will set the Four Seasons apart.
For starters, she said, the hotel is planning to have a 24-hour "technology concierge" to service its busy guests' laptops and other high-tech gadgets. The Four Seasons is for "people who cannot afford disappointment when they travel," she said.
Other luxury perks will include a third-floor rooftop pool, replete with a food bar, plasma-screen TVs and private gazebos (a good thing, since an office building looks down from next door). The 200-room hotel will also offer a spa, fitness center, art from the private collection of Louis Dreyfus, and an Italian restaurant with a fire pit and water wall.
Both the spa and restaurant will be open to the public, Hild said.
Like other local hotels, the Four Seasons will arrange trips for guests to local landmarks and tourist attractions, such as the Palo Alto Municipal Golf Course and museums, so they can "experience California at its best," said Hild.
Plans for the 120-room Rosewood hotel by U.S. Highway 280 are in the beginning stages, since the company's deal with landlord Stanford University was only announced three weeks ago.
A Palo Alto architectural firm, Hill Glazier Architects, is designing both the Four Seasons and the Rosewood. But unlike the 10-story Four Seasons, the Sand Hill Road property is planned to be a "low-rise design that will blend into the surrounding landscape and development," according to Stanford officials.
Also unlike the name-brand Four Seasons, which owns seven properties in the state and 64 around the world, the Rosewood manages 12 hotels and resorts total, only three of which are in the continental United States. Specializing in hotels with individual identities, Rosewood is better known in New York as The Carlyle and in Dallas as The Mansion on Turtle Creek and as the Hotel Crescent Court.
The Rosewood offers services akin to its rivals, from twice-daily housekeeping with nightly turndown to shoe-shine services and watchful poolside attendants.
As for the kind of unique amenities for which Rosewood is known: In February, the company introduced a "Hot Type" library at some of its resorts. Through that program, guests are able to read manuscripts of soon-to-be published fiction and non-fiction by authors such as John Updike, Stephen King, Dan Brown, Annie Proulx and others.
In the jet-set world of luxury, it is "the final word in intellectual one-upmanship," company officials said.
-- Jocelyn Dong
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