Beauty does not make a hotel special to Ralph Burnet, a real estate executive from Minnesota who spends at least 100 nights of the year away from home. He books rooms at some of the world’s priciest hotels and beauty is standard.
So when he checked in last week to Chicago’s Four Seasons Hotel, he wasn’t stunned by the elegant English decor: the marble floors, crystal chandeliers and immense flower arrangements.
What sweeps him away, and what Burnet says keeps him coming back to the Four Seasons again and again, is more intangible and occasionally even mundane. He believes the hotel has a sixth sense about his personal needs.
If he wants to work through the night, there’s a fax machine and computer hookup in his suite. If he flies in at 3 a.m. from Japan and wants a thick, steak, hot off the grill, he can have one. If he needs a suit tailored at 8 a.m. for a 9 a.m. meeting, it can be done.
“When I walk through the door everything is all set up the way I like it,” he says, puffing on a cigar in the hotel’s swank cigar bar. “I go straight up to the same suite almost every time, and it has all the things I need for comfort and for business.
“It’s obscenely expensive,” he adds, “but you pay the price and you get your money’s worth.”
Most people, of course, may be more familiar with the amenities of a Days Inn or Howard Johnson’s than a Four Seasons hotel. But as American hotels swing into their busiest convention and travel seasons, more than a few hoteliers are scrambling to find ways to win over those travelers for whom money is not a concern.
That effort was energized this week by the news that within the world of upper-crust travel, two Chicago hotels–the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton, also part of the Four Seasons chain–were ranked, respectively, as the best in the world and the second-best in North America by Conde Nast Traveler, the industry’s most prestigious magazine. The rankings have raised a compelling question:
In an ever-shrinking world of whirlwind business and celebrity surfeit, what are the cutting-edge qualities of a top-class hotel? The contemporary reality is that travelers more often choose hotels for their exquisite attention to the technological and logistical demands of out-of-town business than for any traditional measure of luxury.
“The American hotelier has figured out what world-class service is and is delivering,” said Irene Schneider, senior editor of the Conde Nast Traveler. “A chocolate mint on the pillow is a given for the affluent traveler. This traveler wants the things that are considered extras elsewhere.
“Sure they want a concierge that can get tickets to any event in town,” she added, “but they’re looking for other things like the speed of room service, the speed of the laundry and the speed of the valet parking. It’s essentially a question of swiftness and it’s expected by these people.”
So hotel executives across the country are searching for new ways to provide better and faster service to their customers. At Chicago’s 696-room Fairmont Hotel, for example, guests can avoid long lines at the registration desk by checking into the hotel from a limousine that picks them up at the airport.
Gordon Lambourne, a spokesman for Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott International Corp., says his hotels provide translation services for foreign guests and voice mail service that allows a guest to record their own greeting.
“That may sound simple,” he said, “but for an international traveler, it may make the difference between a message getting properly to a guest.”
Marriott also offers, he said, a “room that works.” Guests who request it can get a work station set up in their rooms that has data port connections for laptop computers, two power outlets and an ergonomically correct desk and chair.
Having an office in her room has been important to Judith Ann Eigen Sarna, a clothing designer from New York who visited Chicago last week. Sipping high tea in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel, she explained that much of her clothing is made in India, and so she conducts a lot of her business at odd hours of the night.
“It’s an 11-hour time difference between here and India,” said Sarna, 50, pushing her long ebony hair over her shoulder. “I like having a fax machine and computer in my room because then I can do my work from there at any hour of the night, rather than standing in the lobby trying to find someone to help me.”
Sarna, true to her artistic core, is also fussy about ambiance. “I like pretty rooms with heavy cotton sheets and thick towels,” she says. “I think big feather pillows are absolutely delicious.”
Some guests, however, have much more extravagant demands. Nick Mutton, regional vice president of the Four Seasons/Regent Hotels and Resorts, said that over the 4th of July weekend, a famous pop singer stayed at the hotel and wanted to have a private picnic. His staff rented a yard at a private college; set up volleyball and baseball games and catered the food.
Another client, he said, asked the hotel staff to find an old tommy gun as a souvenir from Chicago. After a couple of days, and dozens of calls to gun shops throughout the area, hotel staff found one.
“Service is what makes the difference,” Mutton said. “Marble and carpets are a great backdrop, but what people want is service.”
He added: “Modern travelers are very savvy. They can tell whether the service is by rote or from the heart. They can tell whether people care or not.”
Hans Willimann, the general manager of Chicago’s Four Seasons Hotel, agreed. On a recent tour of his hotel’s kitchen and laundry room, he talked about an exotic beef dish from Japan and about sipping vinegars, flavored with vanilla or orange blossoms, that are imported from Germany.
But, he said, he is most proud of his staff. He waved thumbs up at workers and thanked them in a heavy Swiss accent for “rockin’ the house.”
“We’re No. 1,” he beamed. “And it’s because of these people. Anybody can buy the china and food and drapes that we buy. But it’s the attitude of our staff that makes this place special.”
America’s luxury hotels, which have consistently lagged behind Pacific Rim hotels in service ratings by frequent travelers, have made significant strides in that area, said Schneider of Conde Nast Traveler. For one thing, U.S. hotels have hired more employees so that there is one staff person for every two guests.
Hotel general managers are handpicking waiters, bellhops, concierge attendants and housekeepers to find employees who are resourceful and respectful enough to use whatever legal means necessary to meet their guests’ needs.
And all these efforts have been paying off. In 1996, average daily room rates for luxury hotels were $122.83, with occupancy of 74.2 percent. That compared with an average daily room rate of $71.66 for the industry overall, and an occupancy rate of 65.7 percent.
The Conde Nast survey showed that travelers rate the service in Asian hotels and American hotels neck-and-neck. Conde Nast readers also ranked hotels on location, food, and room furnishings.
Overall, Chicago’s 363-room Four Seasons Hotel, in the 900 block of North Michigan Avenue, won the highest rating of any hotel in the world. And the Ritz-Carlton, owned and operated by the same Toronto-based company, won the second-highest rating among U.S. hotels. In 1996, the Ritz-Carlton and the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas tied for first in North America.
Dr. Arun Kalra, an oncologist who travels across the world five months a year, will only stay at the Four Seasons when he’s in Chicago.
“The people here are always upbeat and always looking for ways to make me feel comfortable and welcome,” says Kalra, a balding, bespectacled wisp of a man. “They smile a lot, but it’s not the plastic smiles. They show genuine concern for me and my needs.”
