For guests used to staying in the best rooms at luxury hotels, the top suite at the Four Seasons Hotel New York may offer the ultimate in bragging rights: To sleep in it, you have to stomach its $35,000 a night price tag. The Zen Room The Ty Warner Penthouse, named for the Beanie Baby mogul and the hotel’s owner, is the most expensive hotel room in the country outside of Las Vegas, an important distinction in the industry since rooms in the gambling capital are often comped for high rollers. The suite has sweeping views of Manhattan in every direction, bathroom sinks made of solid blocks of rock crystal and a personal butler on-call 24 hours a day. Guests have the use of a Maybach or Rolls-Royce-with driver, of course. Room service from the hotel’s restaurants, including one run by celebrity chef Joël Robuchon, is included in the price and nearly unlimited (though one guest was charged for a $1,000 order of caviar). The suite, which opened in 2007, cost $50 million to build and took seven years to design, the hotel says. Mr. Warner says the room is important because it gives the entire […]
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Staying In One of the Country’s Most Expensive Hotel Rooms
Author: SARAH NASSAUER
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Publication Date: 9-Jun-10
Link: Staying In One of the Country’s Most Expensive Hotel Rooms
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Publication Date: 9-Jun-10
Link: Staying In One of the Country’s Most Expensive Hotel Rooms
Stephan: The Wall Street Journal plays this story as a curiosity. I see it somewhat differently. No hotel would spend $50 million (that's right $50 million) designing a hotel suite unless there were people interested and capable of renting it. In fact it is occupied about 25 per cent of the time -- 90 nights a year.
Stories like this are one of the few points at which the lives of the ultra--rich and the rest of us intersect, a briefly open window to which the masses can press their noses. In the U.S. approximately 330,000 people own just a bit less than half the wealth of the country. Within that 330,000 about 3,000 own 65 per cent of that 44 per cent.
They live a life that has little or nothing to do with the life you and your family probably live. This is one of the most important hidden trends shaping the future.