Suite Dreams

With the Trump opening and more luxury spots on the way, the competition in the city among high-end hotels for big-spending travelers—VIPs, celebrities, the garden-variety rich—is hotter than ever. And the secret to victory? Give the guests what they want

By Noah Isackson

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The priciest suite at The Peninsula, with flowers by Kehoe Designs, has a grand piano and a gas fireplace in the living room.

Another SAG meeting, this one at the Ritz-Carlton. Twenty-four staffers gather at 10 a.m. inside an orange-painted room hung with a banner that says In the Race For Quality, There Is No Finish Line. For a "frequent-return guest," a couple on their 161st stay, the SAG sheet reports that they will be greeted at 7 p.m. when their limousine pulls up to the front entrance. The hotel's special-services manager checks her SAG spreadsheet and adds: "Must have extra floor lamp in the bedroom corner. He must have a key for his closet. Please replace the cards in the desk drawer. He does use the stationery often. Extra feather pillows. Do not turn on the radio at turndown. And also a humidifier in his bedroom as well as the living room."

"He likes that even in the summer," a colleague interjects.

"Yes, all year long," the manager replies. She returns to the profile: "A scale in the bathroom. An extra dresser in bathroom.... He doesn't like voice mail. All of his messages must be written, and with his breakfast orders please always have a toaster and apricot jelly." Separately, the manager issues an order to the chief engineer: "Jim, if you could make sure every light is working; I think last time his closet light was out."

Mistakes, when they happen, must be indemnified in kind, and beyond. Over lunch in the Ritz-Carlton Café, the general manager, Christian Clerc, recalls a problem involving a doll. A guest had ordered the hotel's American Girl package for her daughter and, after a day of shopping, expected to see an American Girl doll bed when they walked into their suite. But the reservation desk had switched the family's room and did not alert housekeeping that the doll bed needed to make the switch, too. To soothe feelings, the hotel sent a doll bed to the room, but also dispatched staffers to the American Girl store and bought the little girl a few books about her doll. During turndown service, the staffers left the books on the doll bed.

"In the past, you'd come to the hotel to find things that you didn't have in your home," says Clerc. "The hotels were always ahead of what you could afford. Today, it's the other way around. If you have the plasma TV but not the high level of service, it's not valuable to the guest."

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