Need a helicopter in 30 minutes to fly to Lviv? Airport pickup on a carriage pulled by three white horses? Same-day tickets to the opera? A pair of shoes repaired quickly before a meeting?
These are just some of the high-maintenance guest requests that Kyiv’s concierges carry out on any given day. We’re talking, of course, about the top-notch service professionals working at luxury hotels, not the guards of residential buildings, who snoop on passersby and provide face control to entrants, common in post-Soviet countries.
“We’re expected to achieve the impossible dealing with any request a guest may have, no matter how strange, relying on an extensive list of contacts with local merchants and service providers,” said Vladimir Shorobura, chief concierge of Fairmont Grant Hotel in Kyiv.
This includes, for instance, assisting children with their homework assignments. In one case, the son of a wealthy Kazakh needed to write an essay about Kyiv for school. So his father flew him to the capital’s Opera Hotel, and asked for the concierge staff to rent him a Maybach and hire a top-notch tour guide.
Instead, the “son chose the most expensive way to be absent from his (live) history lesson” by staying in his luxurious room for six hours playing games on a Sony Playstation, said Opera Hotel manager Benoit Kuborn.
There seems no end to what concierges will do to make guests happy, taking their dogs out for walks or delaying flights.
Fairmont’s Shorobura, 33, recalled chasing an owner’s dog for two hours around the city center after being asked to walk it, or using all his powers to delay a VIP guest’s flight for 30 minutes who was running late.
“You don’t know what task or challenge to expect…I make a joke on it: Only your imagination can be your limitation,” said Shorobura.
The later it is, the stranger the request, suggested Olena Pnyovska, Radisson Blu’s public relations and marketing manager.
At 1 a.m. a 40-year old Russian customer promised to check-in at the Radisson if the hotel would find a landing spot for his helicopter, which it did in 30 minutes, said Pnyovska. A 40-year-old Ukrainian guest asked for a private jet booked at 3 a.m., which was promptly arranged for in 20 minutes. And a Kazakh lady at 5 a.m. needed her suede shoes urgently repaired in time for a speech she was supposed to give that morning.
It would seem anything could be reasonably obtained for a price. Radisson’s Pnyovska remembers one Russian guest buying a tie he liked off the receptionist at the hotel desk.
And Intercontinental Hotel concierge Andrey Obertas said guests often ask whether they could buy the pillows and bed sheets because of their comfort.
Yet Obertas, 26, said usually there are reasonable explanations behind strange requests. And the most unusual requests come from regular customers, he said.
“I once had a woman request a private jet because her dad had a heart attack so she immediately had to fly to Munich,” said Obertas.
Still, he said, “you’ve got to be prepared – we have a database, you have to be in the know – because we provide concierge service at a five-star hotel.”
Like when the manager of England’s Manchester United football team asked for 30 kilograms of ice 15 minutes before leaving to the stadium to play against Dynamo Kyiv, recalled Opera’s Kuborn who made sure the ice was put on the bus.
Never to be underestimated, concierges also are expected to have romantic logistics as part of their magical repertoire.
Intercontinental’s Obertas recalled arranging every detail of a wedding proposal on New Year’s Eve: dinner reservations near Independence Square, rose petals on the bed and a trail that leads to a room with a panoramic view of Kyiv, and a large bouquet of flowers on the table.
In another romantic episode, according to Opera’s Kuborn, an American guest asked for a troika of horses to collect him and his fiancé at Boryspil and take them to the hotel under police escort while observing all the “transportation rules.”
“We never say ‘No,’” said Shorobura. “We always try to give some solutions as the hotel’s and concierge’s reputation is vital in this profession.”
And to make that happen, it’s about providing a “personal touch,” added Intercontinental’s Obertas.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
