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With three phones, a TV, VCR, separate tub and shower, enclosed toilet and his-and-her sinks with Italian marble vanities, the 144-square-foot bathroom in suite 501 of the soon-to-open Peninsula hotel has more amenities than many a New Yorker's entire apartment.
In these days of hotel industry competition and over-the-top service, luxury is centered in the powder room, once merely a site of quotidian utility. Opulence goes beyond offering Tiffany & Co. soap to guests, though both The Peninsula and The St. Regis do so. It's a combination of providing simple and elegant comforts, such as Frette robes, as well as technological wizardry, like a heated bidet-toilet seat or a tub-side phone equipped with a muting function.
"Everyone is going this way," says Henry Brennan, a partner in Brennan Beer Gorman, a Manhattan-based architectural firm that worked on The Peninsula. A hotel is a traveler's home away from home, and people are used to having these things at home."
The wow factor is also at play. Five years ago, state-of-the-art meant a second phone line for a modem and a fax machine. Today, executive suites are de rigueur, and bathrooms are the new frontier.
"The point of building better bathrooms is...