As if Scottsdale, Ariz.’s The Phoenician was not luxurious enough, the massive AAA Five Diamond resort, set on 250 acres at the foot of Camelback Mountain, opened up an even more-swank building featuring a boardroom with technology that would make James Bond blush.
Last spring the property unveiled its boutique Canyon Suites “hotel within a hotel” after a $5.5 million renovation of the existing building.
Those staying in one of the 60 Canyon Suites guest rooms enjoy amenities such as a personal Phoenician ambassador, afternoon wine tastings, special welcome amenities, a pool reserved for Canyon Suites guests, and shuttle service within the grounds of the property or Scottsdale’s Fashion Square Mall in a sleek black Mercedes-Benz.
But while the service and rooms—which include three plasma-screen TVs—are impressive, its Red Rock Boardroom is the real scene-stealer.
“We tried to incorporate all of the technology clients need into one space,” says Michael Stephenson, The Phoenician’s audio visual director. “One of our clients said he’s never seen a hotel put this kind of money into something like this.”
All of the cutting-edge electronics in the boardroom, which seats 24, are operated via a book-sized remote with an intuitive graphical interface. Clients could, for instance, click one button and have eight flat-screen monitors pop up on the mahogany conference table, with a variety of input jacks for laptops, MP3 players and other gadgetry. Click another button and three in-room cameras swivel into action for videoconferencing. Yet one more button will cause a canvas painting to roll away to reveal a plasma-screen monitor.
Perhaps the most-impressive piece of tech candy is the large SMART board—sort of an electronic whiteboard—on which clients can use a touch screen to mark up presentations with special pens and have it routed to other monitors in the room. The technology used for the SMART board can import Word and Excel documents, and even recognizes handwriting and turns it into text. Users can download any information onto their laptops during the meeting.
An even larger screen at the back of the room can be used for applications such as movie premieres or viewing marketing videos—all in state-of-the-art surround sound, of course.
