The Broadmoor hotel plans to spend $67 million during the nexttwo years to renovate guest rooms, restaurants and lobbies and builda new outdoor pool complex.
Among other things, guest rooms in the hotel's main building willbe provided with Internet access and CD players.
"The idea is to make it look and feel like 1918 but still meetthe needs of today's guest," said Steve Bartolin, president and chiefexecutive of The Broadmoor.
"We've done a lot over the last eight years and I'm real pleasedwith that work. This ...more than anything, completes the propertyand I think positions us for at least the next decade where we cancompete against the very best in the nation and the world."
Not that The Broadmoor has been having any trouble. Unlike suchwell-known posh resorts as The Greenbrier, in West Virginia, whichrecently lost its Mobil Travel Guide five-star rating, The Broadmoorhas retained the prestigious rating for 40 years.
But the hotel isn't taking any chances.
"You look at what's happened over the decade, and you've got alot of new competition," Bartolin said. "It's important we keep up."
Work, expected to be completed by May, has begun in the hotelcomplex's west building and five south conference rooms. Constructionof a new golf maintenance building also has started.
Taking a break during the hotel's busy season, The Broadmoor willresume renovations in November, rebuilding guest rooms in the mainbuilding. Those projects at the main building, estimated to costabout $20 million, should be completed in the spring of 2001.
"We'll rewire, replumb the entire building, we'll centralize theheat and air. We'll add elevator capacity, we'll expand the lowerlobby," Bartolin said.
For the past several years, The Broadmoor has redesigned themajority of its 700 guest rooms but not those in its main building.Although the hotel has refurbished and remodeled them during theyears, about 180 rooms will be gutted and redone.
"When I say gut, we will literally knock down all the walls onthe guest floors," he said. "The rooms will be larger; the baths willbe larger and more luxurious."
The project recognizes the increasing importance guest rooms playin a customer's visit.
Twenty years ago "they really didn't care so much about the guestrooms," Bartolin said. "It was more the grandeur of the resortitself."
The rooms are oddly configured for today's traveler, he said. Forexample, they have extremely large closets, for the trunks visitorsused when they stayed all summer.
The bathrooms are a different story.
"You can barely turn around in them," he said. "That 1918bathroom doesn't meet the expectation of today's traveling public."
The new bathrooms will include marble, a separate shower stall, asoaking tub, two sinks and a separate room for the toilet.
The rooms will also feature three telephones, high-speed Internetaccess and CD players.
The idea, Bartolin said, is to "keep the traditional look andfeel ... yet do that in a way that gives a more opulent guest roomexperience."
Larger rooms will mean the loss of about 22 rooms overall in themain building, but a new guest room wing is planned for northeast ofthe resort's lake.
The Broadmoor's main pool, built in the 1950s, will also get anew look. The hotel plans to convert the existing main and west poolsto terraces and lawns. A pool complex will be at the north end of thelake.
Other renovations this winter include a new casual restaurant andespresso shop in Broadmoor West, a renovated Charles Court withindoor-outdoor seating and a renovated west lobby.
- Edited by David Fondler. Headline by Barry Noreen
Old hotel, new rooms
To make sure it retains its five-star rating, The Broadmoor plansbigger, more modern rooms with Internet access and CD players.
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