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A Boston homecoming on Fairmont club level

The fourth-floor Fairmont Gold Club at Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, is themed for a townhouse in Boston’s Back Bay, says George Terpilowski, general manager of the historic 383-room hotel and regional VP, North East U.S. Region, AccorHotels. 

Cutlery in the Fairmont Gold Club at Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, is stacked, not strewn.
Cutlery in the Fairmont Gold Club at Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, is stacked, not strewn.

The club lounge has “lots of connecting rooms, including a library and a salon with an authentic-looking gas-fueled log fire,” he explained. The kitchen is one where you want to go in and help yourself, any time, and there is a coffee machine complementing silver samovars of coffee and boiling water.

And, just as at home these days, if guests want cutlery they have to get it themselves. Sets of knives, forks and spoons are rolled in unmarked linen napkins and stored on rungs of a decorative ladder – not only does this encourage guests to be in control, it means the assortment of sizes and heights of tables in several of the club’s rooms look much neater than if some were strewn with cutlery.

The entire fourth floor, 71 rooms and suites, is sold as Fairmont Gold, and a few other suites are added on an ad hoc basis. Fairmont Gold, which elicits a US$150 surcharge a day, automatically gives club access. Breakfast, which includes six big cast-iron pots holding hot items, runs from 6:30 to 10 a.m. weekdays and 7 to 11 a.m. weekends. Daily, there are canapés and substantial snacks from 5 to 7 p.m., and an honor bar until an hour before the lounge’s 11 p.m. close. 

Club Manager Jonathan Sa, who heads a team of nine, says Sunday mornings are the busiest. Including 10 lounging sofas, the space can seat 80 at any one time. Typically 180 people take Sunday breakfast, and 10 a.m., the busiest time, can cause a bottleneck (leisure guests do not eat more than weekday business travelers, but they definitely stay longer). 

The big advantage is not only that no one consumes US$150 worth of food in a day but Fairmont Gold guests are 5% more likely to give positive post-stay reviews, and, Terpilowski said, once they have experienced this “Back Bay home experience,” they return.

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