By Misty Harris, Postmedia News July 26, 2010
The next time you forget to pack your toothbrush -- again -- hold your head high when requesting a spare from the hotel, confident in the knowledge that someone before you asked for 30 pig eyes on ice.
That's just one of more than 100 extraordinary guest requests documented in an internal Fairmont Hotels document obtained by Postmedia News.
Reading like the world's weirdest scavenger hunt, the concierge report -- which includes accounts from across Canada, the U.S., Europe and Asia -- catalogues everything from late-night handcuff runs to taxidermy requests, of which there've been several.
One concierge was even asked to fill in on a blind date.
A Toronto spokesman for Fairmont Hotels confirms the legitimacy of the list, which he says spans the last three or four years of exceptional requests.
"To some degree, being a concierge now is about obtaining the unobtainable," says Mike Taylor, director of public relations for Fairmont. "They'll do their best to arrange whatever is asked -- as long as it's legal."
At The Plaza Hotel in New York, a guest who'd had a falling out with his daughter requested that a Native American reconciliation ceremony, complete with feathers and peace pipe, be performed in his room by a chief -- who, incidentally, had to be tracked down in neighbouring New Jersey by the concierge.
That same hotel had a guest ask for a dinner of roasted tarantulas.
In San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square, the Fairmont Heritage Place had someone request a hyperbaric chamber.
And the concierge at the Copley Plaza in Boston located a pair of velvet-lined handcuffs at 11 pm, at the urging of a female guest -- a bizarre request that nonetheless paled in comparison to the time the hotel was asked to track down a highly specific model of incubator in time to save a guests' ostrich eggs.
"Customers expectations have risen, mainly due to increased competition and the fact that we are all experienced travellers," says Simon Hudson, endowed chair in tourism and economic development at the University of South Carolina. "Good hotel managers and employees know that the only way to guarantee loyalty is to constantly exceed those expectations."
Two staff members at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, for instance, went so far as to rub Ben-Gay on the back of a guest who'd pulled a muscle.
The concierge at the Scottsdale Princess went underwear-shopping for a forgetful guest. And in Hawaii, at the Fairmont Orchid, documented requests include the storage of breast milk, arranging a picnic for 20 by a lava flow, booking a late-night tetanus shot for a celebrity, and shipping two giant sheep-heads to a taxidermist overseas.
Though the requests seem audacious, industry expert Hudson says any cost incurred by a hotel in fulfilling them is nothing compared to the potential lifetime value to their brand.
"The more outrageous the request, the better," says Hudson. "(It) will generate positive word of mouth and may be able to generate publicity from satisfying that customer."
Also in the report, a request for a replica hat of Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson for a ceremonial dinner (Chateau Lake Louise), filling in on a blind date (Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa), a Ouija board (Fairmont Dallas), 400 individually wrapped pieces of chocolate (Vancouver's Fairmont Waterfront), 30 pig eyes for an ophthalmology conference (Fairmont Chicago), a large container of local river water (Banff Springs Hotel), and to purchase an old toilet, which the guest -- a movie star -- believed to have superior flushing capacity (The Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal).
© Copyright (c) Postmedia News
The next time you forget to pack your toothbrush -- again -- hold your head high when requesting a spare from the hotel, confident in the knowledge that someone before you asked for 30 pig eyes on ice.
That's just one of more than 100 extraordinary guest requests documented in an internal Fairmont Hotels document obtained by Postmedia News.
Reading like the world's weirdest scavenger hunt, the concierge report -- which includes accounts from across Canada, the U.S., Europe and Asia -- catalogues everything from late-night handcuff runs to taxidermy requests, of which there've been several.
One concierge was even asked to fill in on a blind date.
A Toronto spokesman for Fairmont Hotels confirms the legitimacy of the list, which he says spans the last three or four years of exceptional requests.
"To some degree, being a concierge now is about obtaining the unobtainable," says Mike Taylor, director of public relations for Fairmont. "They'll do their best to arrange whatever is asked -- as long as it's legal."
At The Plaza Hotel in New York, a guest who'd had a falling out with his daughter requested that a Native American reconciliation ceremony, complete with feathers and peace pipe, be performed in his room by a chief -- who, incidentally, had to be tracked down in neighbouring New Jersey by the concierge.
That same hotel had a guest ask for a dinner of roasted tarantulas.
In San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square, the Fairmont Heritage Place had someone request a hyperbaric chamber.
And the concierge at the Copley Plaza in Boston located a pair of velvet-lined handcuffs at 11 pm, at the urging of a female guest -- a bizarre request that nonetheless paled in comparison to the time the hotel was asked to track down a highly specific model of incubator in time to save a guests' ostrich eggs.
"Customers expectations have risen, mainly due to increased competition and the fact that we are all experienced travellers," says Simon Hudson, endowed chair in tourism and economic development at the University of South Carolina. "Good hotel managers and employees know that the only way to guarantee loyalty is to constantly exceed those expectations."
Two staff members at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, for instance, went so far as to rub Ben-Gay on the back of a guest who'd pulled a muscle.
The concierge at the Scottsdale Princess went underwear-shopping for a forgetful guest. And in Hawaii, at the Fairmont Orchid, documented requests include the storage of breast milk, arranging a picnic for 20 by a lava flow, booking a late-night tetanus shot for a celebrity, and shipping two giant sheep-heads to a taxidermist overseas.
Though the requests seem audacious, industry expert Hudson says any cost incurred by a hotel in fulfilling them is nothing compared to the potential lifetime value to their brand.
"The more outrageous the request, the better," says Hudson. "(It) will generate positive word of mouth and may be able to generate publicity from satisfying that customer."
Also in the report, a request for a replica hat of Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson for a ceremonial dinner (Chateau Lake Louise), filling in on a blind date (Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa), a Ouija board (Fairmont Dallas), 400 individually wrapped pieces of chocolate (Vancouver's Fairmont Waterfront), 30 pig eyes for an ophthalmology conference (Fairmont Chicago), a large container of local river water (Banff Springs Hotel), and to purchase an old toilet, which the guest -- a movie star -- believed to have superior flushing capacity (The Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal).
© Copyright (c) Postmedia News
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