In the increasingly high-stakes business of luxury hotels, a four-star concierge – someone willing and able to meet almost any guest demand – is indispensable. After all, when you’re paying several thousand (or tens of thousands) a night for your suite, you likely expect the royal treatment, even if that means having hotel staff buy your kid a BMW as a 16th birthday present while you’re busy playing master of the universe in the boardroom. Forbes, naturally, has a story on decidedly odd requests received by resourceful concierges around the world (including the preceding gem), which makes for some worthwhile gawping at the things the ultra-rich expect from “the help.”
“Lanfranco Gualandi, now chef concierge at the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto, once shipped a month’s supply of yogurt to a guest from Saudi Arabia, who had tasted it during his stay at the Sutton Place Hotel, and found it very pleasurable. His colleagues at the Sutton Place once chauffeured a guest’s dog across the Canada-New York border in a luxury sedan.
If that’s not enough of a taste of how the new all-billionaire cast of the Forbes 400 vacations, take a look at their list of the world’s most expensive hotels.
