Offering the finest in la-di-da

ROSEWOOD Hotels & Resorts, whose 13 world properties include the celebrity hideaway Las Ventanas al Paraiso in Los Cabos, Mexico (think Babs, Arnold and J.Lo), is spreading its glitz across the American land.

In the last six months, the Dallas-based company, which bills itself as “ultra-luxury,” has added two U.S. hotels to its portfolio, and it’s about to open another: Acqualina, a 51-story Mediterranean high-rise in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., about halfway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

Acqualina, scheduled to open April 28, will be the sixth mainland U.S. hotel for the company, whose original holdings, dating back to the 1980s, include the Mansion on Turtle Creek and Hotel Crescent Court, both in Dallas.

In October, it took over management of the Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe, N.M., and in January it added CordeValle in San Martin, Calif.

“The high end of the market is very strong,” Robert Boulogne, Rosewood’s chief operating officer, said in explaining the expansion. “There’s a pent-up demand for luxury properties.”

In other words, as he later put it, “There’s still a lot of money out there.”

How much? Apparently enough to pay $425 a night in summer and $750 in winter, the published rates for Acqualina’s cheapest rooms.

Deluxe oceanfront suites will command up to $2,200 a night.

The resort’s 54 rooms will offer sitting areas, flat-screen TVs, private terraces and bathrooms with marble flooring and double sinks. The 43 suites will add ocean views, a living room and, in some cases, full kitchens.

Also on the resort’s 4 1/2 beachfront acres will be an Italian restaurant run by New York’s well-regarded Il Mulino, three swimming pools and, later, a two-story spa with 16 treatment rooms overlooking the Atlantic.

The hotel is part of the $300-million Acqualina Ocean Residences & Resort, which includes homes priced from $1.5 million to $15 million, developed by the Trump Group. Not that Trump; this is a separate investment company with offices in Florida and New York.

Rosewood, whose far-flung hotel empire extends to Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Caribbean and Canada, would be happy to add London, Paris, Los Angeles and Chicago, Boulogne said, if it weren’t for the high land prices and, in Europe, legal issues related to leasing.

Future openings include Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in September; Atlanta, Fiji and the Riviera Maya in Mexico, all in 2008; and Palo Alto, Calif., in 2009.

Meanwhile, in the last year, the company has pumped up the pampering with new programs.

NaviGuide provides guests with GPS pocket navigators. Hot Type offers copies of books up to six months in advance of publication. (Current titles include “Terrorist,” by John Updike, and “The Slow Moon,” by Elizabeth Cox.)

These added services are attempts to get an edge in the era of what Boulogne calls “amenity creep.”

Travelers expect hotel rooms to offer all the high-tech electronics, fancy bedding and baths they have at home -- and then some.

Tell guests you have Frette linens these days, Boulogne said, and the response is: “Of course you do. I would expect nothing less.”

But getting an advance copy of a hot novel?

“That’s something money literally can’t buy,” he said.

Information and reservations: (888) ROSEWOOD (767-3966), www.rosewoodhotels.com.