HotelChatter

We called the hotel to find out, and spoke to a lovely agent named Nadine. She confirmed that the hotel would have a soft opening in November, but would not be hosting guests until April, 2010. The time in between would be used for operational purposes: only staff would be on the premises.

Five months seems like a long time for a soft opening to us—does it really take that long to train the “Director of Style” and “Door Ambassadors”?—but that’s probably just because we’re dying to see how the W does the Caribbean. (And we’d really love to do it while skipping out on part of the approaching winter.)

We checked out rates for the April 1st “hard” opening, and rooms start at $569 a night. A Mega Room, with (in?) a pool villa starts at $619 a night, which sounds like a worthy upgrade to us. If only we could fast-forward through the fall, the holidays, and the first few months of 2010, and be sitting in one of those hanging cane chairs right now.