Photos: Courtesy aloft hotels
As travelers have become savvier and vacation costs have skyrocketed, 'affordable luxury' has become the key phrase. A handful of Las Vegas resorts have tried one tactic -- essentially paying for guests' gas -- but a new luxury hotel brand has tried a more direct route: slashing room rates.
Recently launched with outposts in Montréal, California, Arizona and Massachussettes, aloft Hotels is a brainchild of the same team that gave life to the very gay-friendly W Hotels design-chic megabrand.
With the same attention to detail and decadence for guests -- W Hotels' Whatever/Whenever service has become aloft Hotels' anything/anytime -- aloft is aimed at a younger jet set.
This ideal, equally well-heeled and design-conscious customer, the new brand hopes, will be seduced by nifty tech perks (self-service check-in by touch-screen, including a room choice option not unlike that for choosing seats on an airplane; wireless everywhere; flatscreens and iPod docks; and E-room keys that can be downloaded to Blackberrys); luxury eco-friendliness; 9-foot ceilings and huge windows; and state-of-the-art spas and gyms for about $150 a night.
In a nod to this new consumer, the fist aloft hotel actually debuted in the virtual world of Second Life, giving users the opportunity to give feedback before ground was even broken!
Half a dozen more aloft Hotels are slated to open in 2008 from Beijing to Portland, OR and 500 others by 2012 under the Starwood aegis.
