To which I usually respond: “Ha!” Running a high-end travel agency means you deal with all manner of people with all manner of manners. Our clients can often be charming, but they are nearly always demanding. And for some, it seems, the main criterion for a successful vacation is seeing what they can get away with.
For instance, on one occasion a long-time client called to book a very well-known and particularly exclusive (read: expensive) European hotel. We’d worked with him and his family many times in the past, which included sending him and his wife to this same hotel. By this point, however, he was in the midst of an acrimonious divorce — and insisting to his wife that there was nobody else involved. Which is why we were surprised to see that he was taking his mistress with him.
The problems began when the hotel sent its usual pre-departure email asking about any special requests. Unfortunately, the email address they had on record was that of the wife. Rather than confront her soon-to-be ex, she replied to the email with, I would imagine, a certain glint in her eye. Rightly assuming the hotel was unaware of the impending divorce, she said that she, the wife, had recently undergone a number of personal medical procedures and that the purpose of this trip was to aid her recovery. Consequently she required plastic sheets on her side of the bed and a ready supply of incontinence underwear provided in the room.
[See also: How the Luxury Landscape is Entering a New Era]
Furthermore, she was on punishing medication, and had been told by her medical team that she must not drink alcohol under any circumstances, so she insisted the minibar be removed and a note sent to the GM and bar manager not to serve her anything, even if she or her husband requested it.
The mistress arrived and was treated in the most bizarre fashion, like a cross between an invalid and an errant child. Nobody knew what on earth was happening. The wife then logged a complaint against the hotel group for breach of privacy.
I’ve seen some unusual things arranged for honeymoons, as you might imagine, but what surprises me more are the occasions when you realize that the happy couple just haven’t communicated on a fairly basic level. One quite young pair were on safari and the wife had arranged a helicopter transfer between two camps.
Because her new husband was — so she believed — a bit of an adrenaline junkie, she’d asked for the doors of the heli to be removed as a surprise, so they could enjoy more of a Mission: Impossible experience. Unfortunately it turned out the poor guy was petrified of heights, and he had a full-blown panic attack as soon as they were over the bush.
We’ve had multiple mix-ups over the years because of good old-fashioned human error. We’ve had a wife request the Ritz Paris for a surprise anniversary city break, only for my team to book the Ritz London by mistake. Then there was the time when a family of six requested their dream hotel for spring break, and we booked it for Easter instead. On both occasions, we had to pay through the nose to find solutions, which ended up as a significant dent in our P&L.
[See also: Where the World’s Top Travel Experts Recommend for Group Celebrations]
A recent howler involved the billionaire owner of a huge US hedge fund whose assistant booked a ski trip to Switzerland for the family. For reasons I still can’t quite understand, their transfer from airport to hotel was reserved on the train rather than by limo (lesson: don’t assume jokes on Zoom calls are official requests). They weren’t even booked first class, so no seats were assigned. They ended up sitting on their suitcases on the floor of a packed carriage. You can imagine how many phone calls we received.
Sometimes mistakes are just not our fault, but we still have to take the rap. Once, a VVIP guest arrived at a big-brand Maldivian resort with her family late in the afternoon, and was shown to her villa to relax before supper. But, at the insistence of the young children, the family decided to visit the kids’ club to check out the activities available during their stay. It was late, but not really late, so they were surprised to find the front door locked from the inside.
They could hear people in the pool so they walked around to the back entrance — which is when they discovered the kids’ club compere and one of the maintenance staff energetically enjoying themselves in the paddling pool. I don’t know why we got in trouble for that one, but we did. That’s just the glamorous world of luxury travel, right?