Plasma-screen televisions, high-thread-count beds and spas with aroma therapy treatments are a given for luxury hotels.

What sets apart top-rated accommodations such as the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, a 19-year AAA five-diamond award winner, is intensely personal service, says marketing director Bruce Seigel.

Problem with your laptop? A "technology butler" will troubleshoot over the phone or come to your room with an array of cables. If a repeat customer doesn't like feather pillows, housekeepers know to replace them with foam ones thanks to a database of individual guest preferences.

"We want to anticipate your needs," Seigel says. "You don't have to ask. It's there for you."

Florida is flush with exclusive hotels. But none in the Tampa Bay area can claim a top rating from the two most respected travel guides, Mobil and AAA.

The closest is Sarasota's Ritz-Carlton, which rose into the ranks of AAA's nine five-diamond properties in the Sunshine State last year.

Mobil is choosier. Just three hotels in Florida - including the Naples Ritz-Carlton but not Sarasota's - and 32 nationwide scored five-star ratings for 2006.

Since Mobil demoted St. Petersburg's Renaissance Vinoy Resort and the Hyatt Regency Westshore in Tampa in 2002, no Tampa Bay hotel has held even a four-star rating.

The finest hotels are exceptionally expensive to build and operate, says Mark Lunt, who runs the hospitality consulting practice for Ernst & Young in Miami.

That means a true five- or four-star property needs average daily room rates between $300 to $500, he says. The Tampa Bay area attracts increasingly affluent tourists, but lacks enough corporate headquarters that bring high-spending business travelers and conferences.

"These marquis luxury properties need a balance of demand from corporate, group and leisure," Lunt says. "The state's west coast has more back-office facilities that don't lend themselves to corporate travel, large conferences and meetings."

Only a handful of chains - Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental and Marriott International's Ritz-Carlton are the biggest names - manage top-rate luxury resorts.

Developer Dilip Kanji approached Ritz-Carlton about building a Tampa hotel with the 24-carat brand name three years ago.

The company responded, "We're not ready for Tampa Bay yet," said Kanji, chief executive of Tampa-based Impact Properties, which manages, buys and develops hotels. Ritz-Carlton doesn't discuss proposals unless they result in a signed management contract, said spokeswoman Vivian Dueschl.

Veteran office developer Dick Beard says it's past time the Tampa Bay area had a top-tier hotel. The chains take too narrow an economic view of the bay area, which has a growing number of high-income residents willing to spend on luxury items.

Just look at the success of high-end retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom in Tampa.

"That's an indication of the buying power in the Tampa Bay area," he says.

Availability of luxury hotels is always an issue when Tampa bids for a Super Bowl. The topic will likely come up again when a site selection committee for the 2008 Republican National Convention arrives next month.

"It would be a nice enhancement," says Norwood Smith, vice president of sales for the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau. "Corporate sponsors like to get a hotel with a certain pizazz."

And landing a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons gives second-tier cities a symbol that they're moving into the big leagues.

When Bank of America said last summer it will build a $60-million Ritz-Carlton next to its downtown Charlotte, N.C., headquarters, bank officials said the decision made good business sense. More than half of occupied rooms, they said, would be filled by its out-of-town employees, directors and vendors.

But chairman Ken Lewis capitalized on the occasion to stoke civic pride in the city accustomed to living in the shadow of Atlanta.

"The arrival of Ritz-Carlton is one more step in Charlotte's emergence as a primary destination for American business and tourism," he said.

Developers are working on plans for hotels in downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg that they say will raise the bar for luxury accommodations locally.

A group led by Murray Klauber, founder of the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort at Longboat Key, wants to build a $400-million high-tech conference center and hotel overlooking Tampa's port.

Klauber says he signed a contract last month for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts to manage the hotel. Fairmont, which runs AAA five-diamond hotels in Seattle and Scottsdale, Ariz., won't confirm a deal.

Financing from an undisclosed entity for the project, proposed five years ago, is nearly complete, Klauber says. Hotel business insiders doubt Tampa can fetch the room rates required to support a top-tier hotel, especially one with views of a ship yard and petroleum tank farm.

Klauber says he will meet a March deadline to start building the 400-room hotel with 182 condos on a site leased from the Tampa Port Authority.

In St. Petersburg, high-end hotel developer Richard Kessler expects to break ground early next year on the 28-story Grand Bohemian Hotel & Residences.

The $100-million tower will be "the first true luxury hotel in Tampa-St. Petersburg," Kessler says.

His company, Kessler Collection, builds hotels and inns built to "high four-diamond" standards, he says. AAA doesn't distinguish between like-rated hotels.

Kessler says the Grand Bohemian, expected to open in 2009, will feature facilities found in five-diamond hotels: a spa, bathrooms with marble floors and hot tubs and original paintings lining the hallways.

But the costs of running a five-diamond hotel keep him from shooting for a top-rating. The service standards would require 25 percent more staff members, he says.

"More people on the front desk, more people on the floor, housekeepers cleaning eight rooms a day instead of 10," Kessler says. The numbers don't work for a hotel expected to charge an average daily room rate in the low- to mid-$200s.

The St. Petersburg hotel will be modeled after his 5-year-old Westin Grand Bohemian in downtown Orlando.

The four-diamond Grand Bohemian has most of the physical features of a top-rated hotel, from the "concierge level" with upgraded rooms and a private lounge to the "white tea" scent wafting through the lobby.

Like a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons, the Grand Bohemian distinguishes itself on personal service, "the difference between a transaction and an interaction," says general manager Roger Ploum.

Guest databases let staff know if customers like bottled or still water in their room. Pro basketball teams regularly stay at the Grand Bohemian when playing the Orlando Magic, says Ploum, and some superstitious players want the same room each visit. It's taken care of before they arrive.

Ultimately, economics rule. Rising construction costs are putting the pinch on new top-tier hotel projects, says Ernst & Young's Lunt.

Building a Ritz-Carlton hotel can cost $400,000 or more per room, he says. Under the standard rule of thumb for hotel projects, an owner would need to charge an average of at least $400 per day.

"Everybody wants to build a luxury property, but you also want to make money," Lunt says. "Richard (Kessler) is a very smart guy. He builds very selectively."

Few customers in the local market care about the difference between a four-diamond hotel like the Renaissance Vinoy Resort and a Ritz, says Tampa hotel veteran George Glover.

"Filling one of those hotels in the upper stratosphere is difficult to do on a year-in, year-out basis," says Glover, chief executive of BayStar Hotel Group, which develops and manages limited service hotels.

"It has to be a destination in and of itself, a Palm Beach or Miami. Not to disparage the Tampa Bay area, but we ain't there yet."

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.