Luxury hotels are offering eReaders as perks to their elite guests

This week, Fairmont Hotels announced that eReaders would be made available at certain hotels, but only to guests staying on the Gold Floors -- the "exclusive oases" that have Gold reception desks manned by Gold staff members who dedicate themselves to Gold guests, who are elite. The eReaders will be stocked with a variety of Random House titles; the concierges will be briefed on the content, allowing them to make recommendations to the discerning customer.



"It speaks beautifully to the research we've just conducted, to get at the true passion communities that [our guests] feel deeply about," says Alexandra Blum, the executive director of brand development and global partnerships at Fairmont.

Those passion communities are . . . ?

"We believe that traditional loyalty programs are no longer sufficient to truly engage the affluent."

Ah. One can remain impressed by wireless Internet access for only so long. One can watch only so much HBO, HBO2, HBO Comedy, HBO Family and HBO Signature before one develops eyestrain. At a certain point, one hates the sight of one's in-room business center, and one realizes that the mark of true elitism is a return to old-fashioned pleasures.

At Miami's Epic Hotel, guests are presented with pre-loaded Sony Readers. The truly decadent may choose to have genuine paper artifacts delivered to their rooms, ordering books off the "virtual nightstand," a sort of literary room service menu.

In Newport, R.I., the Forty 1? North boutique hotel places iPads in every room.

None of them can compete with New York's Library Hotel in terms of literary luxury; each room is themed with a section of the Dewey Decimal System -- oceanographers in 900.003, Slavic language devotees in 400.001. The hotel has a total of 6,000 volumes -- real ones, not Kindled