Following Arizona legalizing adult-use cannabis this year, The Clarendon Hotel and Spa in downtown Phoenix is now offering a unique green-friendly experience for guests.
The hotel, which opened as The Clarendon Hotel and Spa in 2019, now classifies itself as a ”cannabis-friendly” hotel, where travelers can consume cannabis in designated areas inside the hotel.
The hotel will offer “sleeping rooms” located in the west wing of the hotel, where guests can eat edibles, smoke flower or vape cannabis freely, said Daron Brotherton, vice president of operations at The Clarendon Hotel and Spa and co-owner of Elevations, an educational culinary experience.
"We will also have a membership lounge, which will be available at a membership cost to guests, locals and anyone who wants to pay for the membership costs," Brotherton said. "Our rooftop will be sectioned off to smoke cannabis as well. We're still an operational hotel to non-cannabis; that's why we're cannabis friendly. So, guests wouldn't be able to smoke flower at the pool, but they could vape or do edibles at the pool. They just can't [smoke] flower in any other place except the sleeping room or the lounge."
The sleeping rooms are now available to book at www.budandbreakfast.com, and over the next five weeks, the hotel plans to renovate them. And in the future, The Clarendon may make more sleeping rooms available depending on the demand, Brotherton said.
"The rooms are just going to be a lot brighter in color, but I think what we'll end up doing is [eventually] renovating all the rooms to the cannabis colors," he said. "The rooms themselves will be really fun and will speak to the cannabis folk. The artwork is also really cool, and we're making them easy to clean."
Each sleeping room contains a “scrubber” or an air-purifying system to filter the air in the room and clean smoke residue. And between guests, the hotel will use a more powerful scrubber in each room to deep clean the environment, Brotherton said.
Brotherton said a car service is also available to drive guests to and from nearby dispensaries to purchase products to consume at the hotel. In the future, the hotel plans to do business with different cannabis companies and eventually have glassware available for rent at the hotel, so guests have easy access to pipes and bongs.
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To enhance the experience, the hotel has hired Chef Derek Upton, executive chef and co-owner of Elevations, to host a high-end, six-course dinner with cannabis-infused cuisine. The dinners create an opportunity to educate consumers and other chefs on the endocannabinoid system and cannabinoids, how they work, what they mean, and how people can do infusions at home, Upton said.
"Elevations has taken on this whole side of food. Now we throw these big dinners; we bring in celebrity chefs, and we educate the chefs about what we're doing in cannabis so that they can then take that knowledge and go elsewhere with it," Upton said. "So, we do these high-end dinners to try and change the stigma of cannabis. We're trying to get away from stoner culture, and we're trying to educate."
"From a chef's standpoint, I think it's my duty to bring my practices and knowledge to the forefront," Upton added. "Especially because I've been on Netflix, I've been on a food network for cannabis and in magazines and in [a bunch of] media for cannabis. I have to continue to push that message that we need to build a new community around cannabis, and that's what we're trying to do with the hotel."
Guests 21 years and older can buy a membership pass the event; however, if they are already a lounge member, the tickets will be available for them to purchase at a discounted price.
The next dinner is set to take place Saturday, Aug. 21, from 7:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. MT. Tickets can be purchased at Event Hi using the keywords “Elevated Under the Stars.”
Looking ahead, the hotel plans to duplicate its efforts and open more cannabis-friendly hotels around the country, Brotherton said.
"We have to roll it out so that we can pay attention to each thing that needs attention, like how the rooms are rolled out, how we're cleaning them, and the rules that we're going to implement into the hotel," Upton said. "We are writing that playbook to do this with every other hotel [we want] to do it in. Plus, being one of the first in Arizona, we also have many eyes on us, and we have to make sure that everything is done right all the time. We're only allowed to do the bigger picture if we do it right now."
