VIP ready: THEhotel
at Mandalay Bay
There are times when a VIP
floor just doesn’t cut it. For those players important
enough to deserve and/or demand the utmost in exclusivity, the
industry offers the hotel within a hotel. The famed Waldorf Towers,
tucked into New York City’s Waldorf=Astoria, marked the first
incarnation of the phenomenon in 1931. More recent examples include
the veritable Russian nesting doll that is Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay
Resort & Casino, which plays host to THEhotel at Mandalay Bay
and also shares its top floors with another property altogether the
Four Seasons Las Vegas.
How does an inner sanctum hotel distinguish itself from its
more plebeian environs? By providing luxury galore, for starters,
with cushier linens and amenities (at the Waldorf Towers,
Penhaligon’s skin products, antique furniture and flat-screen
televisions; at the all-suite THEhotel, plasma TVs, wet bars and a
private spa, Bathhouse, ensuring that guests needn’t get their
massages with ordinary Mandalay guests, thank you); very personal
service (staff members at the Towers, all of whom speak at least
two languages, will check guests in and personally escort them to
their rooms), and, in some instances, price: Rates at the Towers
are typically double those at the Waldorf=Astoria, while prices at
THEhotel typically are comparable to Mandalay Bay’s.
And how, of course, does any hotel within a hotel keep out the
riffraff? With polite but mindful security and, most importantly,
entrances between properties that lock on one side, or as a
spokesperson for the Four Seasons Las Vegas quips euphemistically,
“magic doors.”