I recently spent a few days in Montréal, celebrating a friends 40th birthday. There were 18 of us, staying at various hotels downtown and the Village. I chose to stay at the Le Meridien Versaille. The other Starwood loyalists stayed here and at the W.
One of the guys at the W realized that he may have had a bit too much to drink when he originally booked his room. In the “Special Requests” section of his booking, he asked for “A framed picture of Kenya Moore, Miss USA 1993 on the night stand”. He didn’t remember this until he received an email confirmation that they had delivered.
Be careful when booking rooms while drunk.
When staying at the W, their motto is “Whatever/Whenever” and boy did they deliver. I can’t imagine what the hotel staffers were thinking when they saw this request. I’m not sure if they thought it was a joke and they had a good laugh about it, or if they thought it was an extremely creepy request…maybe a little from Column A and a little from Column B.
Miss Kenya Moore
Since this guy was so lucky with this oddball request, I decided to try something similar during my next hotel stay. I was not staying at the W – there aren’t any in Portland, but I was staying at the AC Marriott. I went back into my reservation and asked for something simple: A Framed Photo of Barrack Obama on the desk. The day of check in, I received a phone call at around 16h00 asking if I was going to actually check in and stay at the property that night – I totally thought they wanted to make sure the photo was in the proper room. I was stoked.
I get to my room, throw open the door and what do I find?
The desk area – without my special request
Nothing. They did not fulfill my request. There wasn’t a note or a comment about this request either.
Sure, I’m disappointed. Was it a crazy, silly request that really meant nothing – absolutely. Will I continue to try for something like this in the future – without a damn doubt!
Do you ever put in special requests like this? What’s your hit rate? Any suggestions for a future stay? I’m going to make this part of my normal hotel reservation process.