Hotel Debuts Luxury Suite

Where in Harvard Square can you shower on recently-quarried Indian marble that is used nowhere else in the world, monitor visitors from multiple plasma TVs before they knock on your door, and sit at a desk overlooking Harvard from seven floors up—all for $3,500 a night?

The answer: The Charles Hotel’s 1,800 square-foot presidential suite, which was just renovated at a cost of $1 million.

“This is the best presidential suite in the city,” said Sophie Zunz Burnett, a spokeswoman for the Charles. “The whole concept is to make it feel like you’re at home—in addition to ultimate luxury.”

Burnett said 52 percent of the hotel’s guests are repeat clients, an unusually high number among hotels.

Recent guests include the leaders of Russia, Peru, Turkey, Rwanda, Slovenia, and France, as well as the Dalai Lama and Tony Blair, according to Burnett.

Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., used the suite during last summer’s Democratic National Convention (DNC).

On the other end of the spectrum, Burnett said, the suite attracts celebrities like Barbra Streisand and Bonnie Raitt.

For long-term stays, the price rises to accommodate requests like moving furniture, and Burnett said she expected to recoup the costs of renovation within a year.

The suite’s current occupant is Bain & Company, which is conducting campus recruiting until later this month.

The Charles’ presidential suite is the only lodging of its size in the Square.

The Sheraton Commander doesn’t have “anything as extensive,” according to Mark McCahon, the Commander’s sales director. Instead, it maintains five two-bedroom suites, which are often offered to company executives. Al Gore ’69 stayed in one when his daughter attended Harvard Law School, McCahon said.

Burnett called the Commander a “great hotel,” but said it was not competitive with the Charles’s presidential suite.

The Inn at Harvard, which hosted the Puerto Rican delegation to last summer’s convention, maintains a small presidential suite, said General Manager Richard Carbone. It costs about $400 a night.

The Charles’ main competition for extremely wealthy guests comes from the luxury hotels near Boston Common and Copley Square.

In addition to the Charles, the Ritz-Carlton, the Nine Zero, the Eliot, and the Westin all received a four-diamond rating from the Automobile Association of America this year; the Four Seasons received the only five-diamond rating in Massachusetts.

Several of these maintain presidential suites as large as 3,000 square feet, which can go for as much as $7,000 a night.

The Four Seasons’ suite, which reopened a year ago, features lighting by the artist who created the “Twin Towers of Light” memorial in New York. John Williams has composed several film scores on the suite’s piano.

Richard Friedman, the Charles’ owner, was unavailable for comment.

His firm, Carpenter and Company, is currently transforming the Charles Street Jail in downtown Boston into another hotel.

—Staff writer Brendan R. Linn can be reached at blinn@fas.harvard.edu.