From heated sidewalks to heated toilet seats, check out all the tech in this $28 million Saratoga Springs hotel.
By Chelsea Diana – Reporter, Albany Business Review
2 hours ago
When guests at the new Adelphi Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, enter their rooms for the first time after checking in, they are greeted to a warm room and spectacle.
“The curtains draw apart and the shades go up automatically. The lights go up. It’s a nice wow factor when a guest walks into the room,” said Helen Watson, general manager of the Adelphi Hotel.
The 32-room Adelphi Hotel reopened last fall after $28 million in renovations to the prime property on Broadway in Saratoga.
The renovations brought the 19th-century hotel into the 21st century, with luxurious guest rooms, two restaurants and the latest in hotel technology. The Adelphi Hotel was recently featured as part of Travel + Leisure’s 2018 It List, the magazine’s selection of the best new and newly-renovated hotels around the world.
Historic Adelphi Hotel
The Adelphi Hospitality Group worked with Steadfast IT, based in Saratoga Springs, on much of the technology behind the hotel. Mike Hatalla, director of technology at Steadfast, was the point person directing the Adelphi Hotel project.
Steadfast IT was started in 2002 with a focus on helping companies reduce costs by sharing services, such as a data center and front office personnel. That business model has shifted to provide IT services to companies remotely as the company has developed software to make that process seamless.
Hatalla said technology touches every inch of the Adelphi Hotel, from the fiber optic internet connections to every room to heated sidewalks to melt snow and ice, and little details, like hidden USB ports and outlets throughout the property.
The hotel works with two fiber optics suppliers, Verizon and FirstLight Fiber, to guarantee service will never be down. Cell phone signal boosters and Wi-Fi routers dot the hallways to ensure guests always have access to their devices.
“We’re luxury, we charge a lot of money for our rooms. We don’t want guests to be disappointed because the Wi-Fi isn’t working well,” Watson said. “At my old hotel in LA, people would complain about internet speed. We wanted to make sure that didn’t happen here.”
Rooms at the Adelphi run as low as $125 for locals to stay during the week, and can go as high as $4,000, according to the Adelphi’s booking site.
The guest room experience goes beyond the fast internet. Each of the guest rooms’ bathrooms are outfitted with heated floors, heated towel racks, heated toilet seats with built-in bidets and heated mirrors, so the glass does not fog. TVs in the rooms are equipped with popular streaming services, such as Netflix and Amazon, as well as apps to order room service.
Next to the door, the guest rooms have pads with buttons, including a privacy light that goes on instead of a do not disturb sign, and a “make up room” button requesting service to the room.
“When they check in, the heat will automatically kick up [in the room],” Hatalla said. “There’s a lot of technology around conserving energy.”
