A good concierge should be able to get you just about anything, but as Forbes has discovered, some of the world’s high-flyers have no qualms about making the most extraordinary demands.
For instance when Thomas Wolfe was once staying at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, he produced a to-do list that he wanted met by the end of the day.
He asked for a haircut, a dinner reservation at Gary Danko and a return flight to Zurich. All perfectly normal. Then the Swiss magnate added he would like a Ferrari GTO.
Unperturbed the concierge asked: “Any color preference, sir?”
“Something dark,” he said. “And I don’t want to spend over $5.5 million.”
Such largesse comes as no shock to James Little, the head concierge at the Peninsual Hotel in Beverly Hills. He once flew to London to pick up the dog of a bereaved guest who was sorting out her late husband’s business affairs.
She asked Little to charter a private jet and collect her dog (an aging Jack Russell terrier called Millie). She also though it would be better if they got to know each other before the return trip. So Little hopped on a plane and spent a week in London (on the guest’s expenses) to become familiar with the pooch. Little then escorted the dog back to the States. He flew Business Class. Millie flewFirst.
Raffaele Sorrentino, concierge at Hotel Adlon Kempinski in Berlin once dismissed a bellboy on a 5-hour round trip to pick up a cuddly toy for the four-year-old daughter of a guest. Meanwhile, Maite Foriasky, the head concierge at The Setai in Miami’s South Beach had to find a way to ship a tiger to London-on two days notice.
Finally at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun, a guest with lots of cash to splash decided to host a private film screening on the beach. But there was an issue. The guest didn’t like the sensation of sand between his toes. The solution: rolls and rolls of white carpet were flown in from Mexico City and spread across the beach.
“One of the attributes of the concierge is that we must remain unflappable at all times,” said Pallais of the Plaza Hotel in New York. “To us, no request is deemed outrageous. We prefer the term ‘unique.'”
Unique? Without doubt…
(Source: forbes)