Close User Name Password
Login Register
Hotel stories straight to your inbox:

Tags: / / / /

Florida Ritz-Carltons Introduce Teen Lounges

Where: fl, United States
December 22, 2008 at 9:51 AM | by Jenna | 4 Comments

When your kids are too old for day care and too cool to be seen hanging out with you, taking them on vacation can be a bit of a nightmare (we speak only from personal experience; the years of bratty behavior that coincided with the years we subscribed to Tiger Beat were especially hard on the parents during family trips). If only there were someplace in your hotel that the teens could run off to; a place where they can roam free among their own kind (while being "subtly supervised," of course).

Three Ritz-Carlton properties in Florida have come up with a genius solution: teen lounges. While this is old news for cruise ships and such, it's not often (or, really, at all) that we see something like this from a top tier luxury hotel chain. And if we were teens again, we'd hang out in one of these lounges and talk about Miley Cyrus and XBox or whatever the kids talk about these days while our parents got spa treatments or hit the afternoon tea service — they've actually got some pretty cool stuff in these rooms.

The teen lounge ("Coast") at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach has a state-of-the-art production studio, a DJ booth and "model-style photography set", plus the standard teen-loungey faves like a pool table and a chalk board (which is supposed to be used for "deciding the day's activities based on the group’s whim").

The Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island has a program called "Our Space," which puts a bit more emphasis on the activities: teens can participate in beach games, water sports, night sports, fitness challenges, video game challenges, beach kayaking, bike hikes, and pizza and movie nights. The "Our Space room" is off-limits to everyone in the resort except teens and the "Our Space" counselors, and the room has flat-screen TV's, a Wii, an X-Box and a Playstation, laptops, iPods and an iPod docking station, air hockey, foosball, billiard tables and a little movie theater.

The Ritz-Carlton Naples has a bit more of a tech-focused lounge to offer teen guests. Its VUE ("Virtual User Experience") has some pretty kickass stuff:

VUE features the most popular interactive virtual-reality games played via consoles hooked up to 40” LCD TVs, from Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite® game stations with wireless controllers, to Sony Playstation 3 and the latest from Nintendo Wii. In addition, VUE boasts a 63” LCD with Blu-ray player controlled via remote touchpad and a top-of-the-line Bang and Olufsen surround sound system. Central to the room is the Mac station surrounded by six stylish green leather bar stools for the iMac computers. Additionally, two individual seating areas each offer a personal 19” flat screen television with DVD player and an iPod docking station for a more intimate experience for those teenagers who just want to chill out.

The teen lounges are aimed at guests ages 13-19 — if you're a parent, you're not allowed inside 'em, so check out pics of all three spaces here. We're pretty sure our 14-year-old selves would have loved to have these on those family vacations back in the day; props to Ritz-Carlton for paying attention to the "not a girl, not yet a woman" set (it's a Britney reference, people).

4 Comments

Post a Comment

Return to » Florida Ritz-Carltons Introduce Teen Lounges

  1. Extended Checkout

    HotelChatter Member

    Awesome

    God forbid they go outside and play a sport.  This could generate some revenue though, so I approve.
    December 22, 2008 at 11:05 AM
    #Permalink

  1. mytwocents

    HotelChatter Member

    Ritzy Teens

    Just goes to show you, greed IS good ;-)
    December 22, 2008 at 3:05 PM
    #Permalink

  1. juliana

    HotelChatter Editor

    i wish i had this

    when i was a teen. seriously. there were so many trips my brother and i went on with my parents and we had to stay in silly hotels with NOTHING to do. this would have been fun. but then again, i probably would have been too paralyzed by my teenager awkwardness to muster up the courage to hang out in there. unless i could have the room all to myself.
    December 22, 2008 at 3:39 PM
    #Permalink

  1. 3GVL

    HotelChatter Member

    really?

    I seriously question the notion "genius solution: teen lounges" in paragraph two.
    December 26, 2008 at 3:55 PM
    #Permalink

Return to » Florida Ritz-Carltons Introduce Teen Lounges

Leave a Comment

Not yet a member? Click here to become a member.

Already a member? Log in below:

Comment with your Facebook account.