(Credit: Doug Gladstone, 2023)
Saratoga Arms GM Rachel Boggan, left, and Co-Owner Amy Smith get ready to greet guests in the hotel’s dining room. Pictures of President Ulysses S. Grant, a distant relative of Smith’s father, Noel, adorn the walls.
Amy Smith, who co-owns the Saratoga Arms Hotel with her mother, Kathleen, likes to consider herself a goodwill ambassador for the City of Saratoga Springs. It is a role she, or her parents before her, have played for the past 25 years. They will celebrate their silver anniversary of owning the 30-room luxury hotel on Broadway later this year. The building itself was constructed in 1870.
The owners are not yet telling what will happen, but the official date of purchase is Dec. 17, so they might have a little something planned then, they admitted, and maybe some other events in late fall or early winter.
“Ninety-nine percent of our guests love us,” Amy Smith said to a first-time visitor to the hotel. “Even if that one percent doesn’t love us, we still want them to visit Saratoga Springs.”
The general manager, Rachel Boggan, agreed.
“We have nothing to sell as a destination unless Saratoga Springs is wonderful and robust. That is why we offer our guests so many theme packages, to show off all the great things to do in this town,” Boggan said.
“We curate your bookings for you,” Smith said. “All we really need for you to do is make a reservation and we’ll help you select and organize the things you want to do when you stay with us.”
The Saratoga Arms is one of the three official hotels participating in Saratoga Beer Week, whose largest event takes place on Saturday, Feb. 25, at the Saratoga Springs City Center.
A month later, the Arms will partner with The Bocage Champagne Bar, Chianti Ristorante and Putnam Market on a wine-themed weekend. Putnam Market Wine Director William Roach, sommelier Nicholas Adie and the Arms’ own executive chef, Tim James will be holding seminars and tastings.
A similar whiskey-themed weekend is scheduled to be held April 14 to April 16.
They are hosting a four-day package during the Saratoga horse racing meet this summer that features talks by horse owners and breeders, Boggan said.
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That it is still such a popular vacation spot is a credit to both Smiths and to Boggan.
The hotel had to shut down and furlough staff during the second half of March and all of April of 2020 in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It reopened in May that year.
“We lost six full weeks of our reservations prior to us shutting down,” Boggan notes.
Smith says she spent much of her time during those weeks dealing with governmental requirements in order to receive funding via the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL).
“They were life savers for us,” she said.
As a result of COVID-19, Boggan points out that the hotel had to “pivot on a daily basis” from how they typically operated in order to conform to the new normal.
“We put in place an extensive checklist for our housekeeping staff to follow, to make sure that every surface was sanitized, in order to be in compliance with the prevailing health protocols,” she explained.
Some of the new procedures stuck: Check-ins are also now done behind a glass petition, the buffet spreads in the dining area went by the wayside, text messages to guests were introduced and room service is now offered.
Maybe the most challenging aspect was finding staff to work at the Arms, Amy Smith said.
“You know, it’s not like we can do our work remotely, we are very much like a hospital, we’re required to show up every day,” she says. “COVID opened up opportunities for people who want to set their own hours, who don’t want to punch a clock and work the traditional 9 to 5. But our business isn’t like that.”
[Smith is the volunteer chair of the Saratoga County Chamber, as was her mother Kathleen before, making them the first mother-daughter duo to hold the position. Read more here.]
The ship has been righted, however.
According to Boggan, during its busiest season the Arms is fully staffed with approximately 35 employees.
Pandemic or not, both Smith and Boggan pride themselves in the fact that, even after one-quarter of a century, the Arms is still considered to be a high-end establishment by such entities as the American Automobile Association (AAA), which gave it a Four-Star Diamond designation just last year. Diamond inspections are unscheduled annual hotel inspections that gauge a property’s quality, cleanliness and condition.
Said Smith: “We have modern amenities, but we’re still in this beautiful historic building right in the heart of downtown Saratoga Springs."