October 8, 2008

US & CANADA | US | BOSTON

Boston or Bust

By Nicole Cotroneo

Economic meltdown be damned. Beantown bargains on upping the ultra luxe.

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Neither a four-alarm fire nor a Wall Street crisis could ultimately stop Boston’s new Mandarin Oriental from opening this week. The 14-story, $300-million hotel, retail and condominium complex in tony Back Bay is the crescendo to a luxury hotel boom that has defied a doomsday economy. Over the last year, Boston has outperformed the US market average for luxury hotel occupancy. And now the Mandarin Oriental is being touted as the latest symbol of the city’s shift toward a more brazen display of wealth.

Opulence is of course a trademark of Mandarin Oriental, which has only four other hotels in the US with three more in the works. Guests of the Boston property can expect the largest crash pads in the city (at the most expensive rates, too). Many of the 148 rooms feature mirrored rainforest showers, king-size beds with Frette linens and, in the presidential suite, a working fireplace. If you want your own Frette sheets for home, then just head to the shopping arcade, where you’ll also find Gucci and the new home of Boston’s acclaimed L’Espalier restaurant. But you’ll have to wait until October 22 for the hotel’s spa — you can thank the aforementioned blaze that swept through the construction site last spring.

You can’t, however, blame natural disaster for halting the city’s other $300-million hotel-condo behemoth, formerly The Regent Boston at Battery Wharf. Regent abandoned the project in July after a fall-out with developers (“philosophical differences” was the party line). Fortunately for visitors eager for a harborside location on the doorstep of the North End (Boston’s “Little Italy”), Fairmont just took over management. The 150-room Fairmont Battery Wharf will open in December with water shuttle service to Logan International and a restaurant designed by three-star Michelin chef Guy Martin.

So how will the city’s older luxury lodgings cope with this fresh coat of gilt? The Millennium Bostonian Hotel (guestroom pictured), overlooking Faneuil Hall marketplace, just underwent a sweeping room renovation and debuts a new restaurant next month. Earlier this year, Back Bay’s Colonnade Hotel — home to Boston’s only rooftop pool — spent $20 million to step into the 21st century: Expect flat-screens and electronic docking stations — plus the hotel’s signature rubber ducky in each bathroom.

Yet the prize for most youthful makeover goes to the city’s second oldest hotel in continuous operation, Copley Square (not the Fairmont Copley Plaza), also in Back Bay. Reopening this winter, the hotel introduces personal check-in pods. Which should sync seamlessly with the chilled vibe at Saint, the hotel’s “boutique nitery” — evidently that means a sultry dinner-lounge with a vodka infusion bar and bed pods.