Hotels Are Saying It With Fresh Flowers

Some hotels in this country and overseas have made a startling discovery: Short of rebuilding, there’s not much that they can do to improve their guest rooms.

They’ve added the requisite amount of bathrobes and designer soaps to the bathrooms. And, in some cases, they have installed more comfortable beds.

But now, many hotels have added a distinctive touch to help with the total guest experience: fresh flowers.

“Not long ago,” says Victor Emery, director of the Savoy in London, “it was not unusual to walk into a hotel room and be greeted by a tacky bouquet of plastic or fabric flowers. Today, we feel that if the flowers can’t be fresh, there shouldn’t be any at all. We want people to remember us by the good things we do.”

A Certain Thoughtfulness

Emery’s view is shared by many hoteliers who believe that simple, fresh flowers indicate a certain thoughtfulness to guests. And more often than not, flowers in guest rooms go a long way toward making the stay a more positive experience.

At the Beverly Hills Hotel, flowers and gardening are the full-time responsibility of William Gusman, 56, who has been with the hotel for 37 years. He commands a crew of eight full-time gardeners charged with caring for the hotel’s 16 acres. The hotel’s five lawn mowers are constantly in use, landscaping the grounds, filled with dozens of varieties of flowers, as well as 100-year-old magnolia and cypress trees.

But the gardeners are always hard at work on special projects for guest rooms and bungalows.

When Queen Juliana of the Netherlands stayed in Bungalow Five, Gusman and his gardeners filled the room with tulips.

But VIPs aren’t the only ones who get flowers. Each morning, 250 roses are delivered to guest rooms. And in a back room of the hotel, Ann Schinto, the flower room supervisor, constructs dozens of bouquets of tulips, daffodils, roses, pansies, petunias, ranunculuses, lilies and daisies.

Flowers Aren’t Free

All of this additional flower work doesn’t happen without a substantial cost. The Beverly Hills Hotel spends $135,000 a year on cut flowers and uses 23 million gallons of water for its gardens.

“Guests notice what we do,” Gusman says, “and the garden work adds to the general good feeling they have about the hotel. I know they appreciate it.”

And some guests seem to appreciate his work more than others. Each month, the hotel has to replace dozens of white chrysanthemums, tulips and other plants that guests pull out of the ground to take home with them.

But no one seems to take flowers more seriously than the folks who run Rosewood Hotels. The Hana Ranch Hotel on Maui has its own 11 1/2-acre nursery on the island that supplies other Rosewood hotels with many of their flower needs and grows orchids, ginger and papaya.

Jams and Herb Gardens

Each year the hotel also makes its own papaya and mango chutney jams. And the Bel-Air Hotel has its own little-known herb garden.

But the Rosewood group doesn’t stop there. Twice each year, Rosewood President Robert Zimmer flies to Holland on special flower buying trips.

“We like to use the term flower emergency here,” says Rick Duren, who handles the complicated floral chores at the Crescent Court hotel in Dallas.

Duren supplies flowers to 147 rooms a day at the hotel and makes special arrangements for regular return guests on request.

“There’s a growing awareness about flowers,” Duren says. “Our guests have become accustomed to them, and for many, having flowers in the room has become almost an addiction.”

Native Flowers

Duren uses 75 varieties of flowers and plants “from every continent except Antarctica.”

Overseas, many hotels take good advantage of native flowers. The Sheraton Herradura Hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica, abounds in live orchids and other exotic plants.

The Salt Lick Lodge in Kenya, on a 28,000-acre game sanctuary, grows all its flowers. The Corfu Hilton boasts an in-house hothouse and six staff gardeners.

In Barbados, the Hilton’s 14 landscaped acres are used to grow oleander, fragrant frangipani, hibiscus, red and white ixora and bougainvillea to be used in guest rooms. Chief gardener Everton Springer conducts regular garden tours.

At the Mauna Lani Hotel in Hawaii, Carol Caldwell works with a staff of four to provide flowers and special arrangements for guests. “Our philosophy,” she says, “is that all the flowers should be locally grown.”

100 Special Bouquets

Every morning at 6, Caldwell gets her special deliveries of heliconia, anthurium and ginger. “It’s not unusual,” she says, “for us to do 100 special bouquets a day.”

Thirty staffers and nine full-time floral designers at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Fla., put together a minimum of 200 special floral arrangements a week. “It’s quite a challenge,” says Brenda Nichols, who supervises the work. Nichols also owns a special floral shop in the hotel. Five thousand flowers are used each week, including 600 orchids that the hotel buys just to float in guests’ tropical drinks.

“We want the flowers to make a statement,” Nichols says.

One recent guest loved roses, orchids and lily of the valley. But when Nichols and her staff attempted to create an arrangement for him, they discovered that lily of the valley was out of season.

But when the guest, a Saudi prince, checked into his suite the next day, he was greeted by 600 yellow roses, about 200 blooms of orchids and, of course, the lily of the valley, which had been overnighted from a wholesaler in Nashville, Tenn.

Assembled in Rooms

The Essex House in New York City specializes in traditional Japanese flower arrangements for its guests. The reason: The Essex House is now owned by Nikko Hotels International, a Hotel Subsidiary of Japan Air lines.

“The arrangements are put together directly in the guest rooms,” says spokeswoman Beth Preddy. “It is the Japanese way of creating a union between the colors of the flowers and the decor of the room.”

And in Bangkok, almost every hotel abounds with traditional Thai gardens used to supply guest rooms. Included are jasmine, red ginger, plumbago, gardenia and the startling neon, with shocking-pink flowers. Other hotels in areas where flowers aren’t readily available have to work harder to supply flowers to rooms, often at considerable cost. In China, the deluxe White Swan Hotel in Canton has installed private Chinese gardens in some suites.

The Drake Hotel in Chicago spends $70,000 a year on fresh flowers. During winter months, all the flowers are flown in. And during the cold months, Executive Chef Leo Waldmeier grows herbs hydroponically.

Replanted Continuously

At the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, grounds are replanted throughout the year with 250,000 plants, including 40 blooming species. These complement the 1,016 (yes, someone counted) indoor plants that accent hallways and guest rooms.

In England, flowers have become a must at many hotels. Every morning at 4, a buyer from Edward Goodyear, one of the oldest and most fashionable florists in London, arrives at the new Covent Garden Market, south of the Thames River in London.

An hour later, the flowers are on their way to the Savoy Hotel. Tulips from Holland, dozens of roses, carnations, Peruvian lilies and irises arrive in time for the hotel’s eight full-time florists to make the arrangements that are delivered daily to each guest room.

‘Quite an Operation’

“It’s really quite an operation,” says Sheila Taylor Jones, a managing director of Goodyear, which just happens to be owned by the Savoy. “We believe that having fresh flowers in the guest rooms truly adds to having a great stay with us.”

Not only does Jones’ staff make all the floral arrangements for the Savoy, but also for the Connaught, Claridge’s and the Barclay.

In addition, Goodyear frequently delivers flowers around London for hotel guests.

Goodyear has also provided floral arrangements for most state occasions, including the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. And each year, on Valentine’s Day, the floral shops at the Savoy and Claridge’s sell thousands of red roses to both visiting and local romantics.