Hotels Offer Some Unusual Services

In the last 10 years the hotel industry has been trying to upgrade and add to guest services.

Some offer complimentary shoeshines, others will pick you up at the airport in a limousine. Many have added secretarial services and business centers for visiting executives, as well as 24-hour room service. And most have added concierge services.

This expansion of hotel services was long overdue, although there’s nothing particularly unique or exciting about them.

However, a growing number of hotels are now trying to outdo themselves with a host of truly unusual services. They may not be advertised or promoted extensively, but they do exist.

For example, each morning at the Hilton in Wichita Falls, Tex., an employee runs out in front of the hotel and washes the windows of every car in the parking lot.

Feel a sudden urge to go bowling in Shanghai? No problem. The new Hua Ting Sheraton features ultra-modern lanes.

Telescope on Roof

Are you a stargazer? The Hyatt Regency Maui offers a special rooftop astronomy night from its Lahaina Tower.

For those who desire the utmost in discretion, The Mandarin in Hong Kong offers blind masseurs, on call 24 hours a day. A similar service is provided at the Westin Chosun Beach Hotel in Seoul, South Korea.

But who would want a blind masseur? “They are most often used by public officials and celebrities,” Mandarin spokesperson Geraldine Pitt says. “These are people who don’t really want to be seen by anyone. Or they are used by guests simply too timid to be seen in the nude. Feeling is, as they say, believing.”

(Note: a number of hotels in Japan also provide this same service.)

Some hotels provide other unusual fitness and medical services. Each morning at 7 a.m. the general manager of the Hilton International in Melbourne leads guests on their jog through the Fitzroy Gardens.

The Alexis Hotel at Riverplace in running-conscious Portland, Ore., supplies fleece warm-up clothing in each room. And downstairs at the concierge desk the hotel provides athletic shoes in 24 sizes. (The washable shoes are professionally cleaned before each use.)

Dentists on Call

Have a toothache? At the Ramada Grand Hotel in Budapest, guests receive complimentary dental examinations.

If you’re staying at the Old Vicarage Hotel in Stretton, England, you’re in for a treat. Copies of the officially banned book “Spycatcher” are provided as bedtime reading.

Then there’s “Reginald.” At the Ramada Renaissance Hotel in Manchester, guests are presented with the small yellow plastic duck in their bathtubs. “Some people think it’s just a toy,” a spokesman said. “But we’re convinced that the duck performs a service.” Similar ducks have found their way into bathtubs at the McLean, Va., Hilton.

If you’re ever visiting the Taj Mahal Inter-Continental in Bombay or the Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi, there won’t be any need to make those secret late-night, long-distance calls. The hotel offers a 24-hour resident astrologer.

Each morning at 11 a.m. at the new Scottsdale Princess Resort, guests relaxing near any of the hotel’s pools are offered complimentary hot consomme. (You can also find this service at the Plantation Inn in Ocho Rios, Jamaica.)

Poolside loungers at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, are spritzed with Evian water by the pool boys.

Video Libraries

VCRs are available to guests at the Grand Bay Equitable Center in New York City (the hotel also features an extensive videotape library). And the Pierre thoughtfully places heavy-duty Toshiba humidifiers in guest rooms.

In Auckland the Regent offers complimentary tie and scarf cleaning. But remember, many of these services aren’t advertised--you just have to know about them.

Another unadvertised service has become nothing less than a small San Francisco legend. At the Westin St. Francis, Arnold Batliner runs the world’s only money laundry. Batliner recently celebrated his 84th birthday; he’s the same age as the hotel.

Each year Batliner has washes more than $500,000 dollars worth of coins. “Clean money” has been a St. Francis trademark since 1938, when the hotel introduced the service for women guests who didn’t want their white gloves soiled by dirty silver dollars.

“It’s of diminishing value,” says managing director Robert Wilhelm, “and most of our guests don’t even know about it. But we will continue it as long as Arnold’s here.”

Not surprisingly, many unusual hotel services focus on cuisine. The Seattle Sheraton allows guests to take their freshly caught fish/fowl to the executive chef, who will prepare it for dinner.

At the Peppermill Hotel & Casino in Reno the chef at Le Moulin restaurant delights in performing an extremely popular mealtime service: a wide choice of wild and unusual game, cooked to order and available to any guest.

Rattlesnake Steak

Menu items range from rattlesnake, alligator (cooked Cajun style), tenderloins of Scottish roe buck and wild boar, to mountain lion, domestic antelope and even hippopotamus T-bone steaks. The service is complemented with one of 44 types of edible flowers, including potted tarragon marigolds, borage, bachelor buttons, geraniums and fuchsia.

At the Westin Hotel in Vail, Colo., guests who ski down the mountain are met by special attendants from the hotel who are waiting for them with cups of hot cider and hot towels. The attendants also take the guests’ skis, and store and wax them.

A trademark of the luxurious Fourways Cottage Colony in Bermuda are the baskets of fresh fruit and pastries placed outside each of the property’s 10 cottages at sunrise. The pastries are baked only two hours earlier by the colony’s bakery on the property.

At the Four Seasons Biltmore, Santa Barbara, all departing guests who are traveling by car will find a Biltmore snack pack of homemade chocolate chip cookies and milk on the car seat when their vehicle is delivered by the valet.

Perhaps the nicest part of waking up at Las Brisas in Acapulco, Mexico, is opening the “magic box” in your casita . Early each morning, attendants quietly visit each of the hotel’s 300 casitas and open the outside door to the box.

Trays containing baskets of fruit, a thermos of hot coffee and freshly baked sweet rolls and croissants are inserted. Another nice touch at Las Brisas is that each casita has its own swimming pool and, once a day, another attendant quietly appears and places dozens of fresh bright-red hibiscus flowers in the pool.

Unusual Weddings

Two hotels pride themselves on arranging last-minute, unusual weddings. In Fiji, marriages at the Regent are nothing less than spectacular events, complete with ministers following traditional Fijian customs.

And in the British West Indies on the island of Antigua, the St. James’s Club at Mamora Bay is now accustomed to the sudden matrimonial urges of its guests. Head concierge Sandra Wiltshire stays in constant touch with the Antiguan Registrar General and ministers.

Perhaps most important, Wiltshire has the phone numbers of everyone from helicopter pilots to air cargo specialists to make sure that everything is handled just so after the nuptials.

“The wedding is one thing we can handle easily,” she says. “It’s the honeymoon that’s tough.”

One couple wanted to take their honeymoon “somewhere special,” and Wiltshire made the appropriate phone call. A few hours later the newlywed husband and wife left Antigua via submarine.

Horse-Drawn Carriages

Some hotels use horses for guest transportation. Thirty-four draft horses imported to the new Westin Kauai pull guests around the resort in a small parade of convertible carriages and dray wagons.

And if by chance you insist on traveling with your own horse, the Regent in Melbourne, Australia, provides special equine accommodations. (Outmoded Australian innkeeper laws require hoteliers to provide shelter and care for horses.) Thus the hotel maintains suitable stabling and fodder on a daily basis.

Finally, the Sagamore Hotel at Bolton Landing, N.Y., also transports guests by horse and carriage from May through October.

I don’t know what it says about the rest of the hotel staff, but the horse has become so popular that it was recently named “employee of the month.”