The Paris skyline from the roof of the Bon Marché, taken by me.
There is a great power to being the executor of peoples’ needs, wants, desires. As a concierge, hotel customers place an undue amount of trust in you. Trust, of course, that your recommendations will be good; that they can come to you for almost anything and, most importantly, that you won’t betray their confidence. That makes our little chats delicate, of course - but I’ve been doing this for so long, really, that no customer, not even the one I want to tell you about today, would venture to guess I’m speaking about them.
Trust, though, isn’t just about the assurance I’ll stay mum about my clients’ requests. To them, I represent the key to a world of indulgence, the gate into an Ali Baba’s cavern filled with the greatest wonders. They think of me not as an enabler, but more as a guide: it is my role to go beyond what they ask me and divine what hidden desire motivated their request, be it even for the most mundane of demands: one looking for a dinner recommendation to see and be seen will require a different kind of booking from the food aficionado who’s flown across the world to taste rare delicacies - and both have the potential to tip exorbitantly, if you offer them what’s right.
In large part, taking guests to their choice is about storytelling. Nobody only wants a recommendation: they go to one of the most refined establishments in the world because they want an experience - and that experience starts with the person who greets them at the front door, already knowing their name and with a list of their past bookings and activities to boot. You don’t just bring an art lover to a gallery - you find them a guide who’ll know to speak with the gallerist in the right hushed undertones to make the visitors feel they are being initiated into the great secret world of art; you’ve briefed the gallerist about who his potential clients are and he knows just the piece to pull out from his store, as if in confidence, to elicit wonder and excitement.
There’s one situation in which this storytelling is more important than ever - a situation, mind you, that you should take every precaution to avoid, because it goes against the very nature of your work not just as a concierge, but as a luxury establishment of travel: saying no. That you should even be in the position to say it should not be frequent. But, when confronted with that dreaded word, you should tread carefully: refusing a guest’s request outright is simply not an option, and you should think fast to weave a narrative around the compromise you will offer (and you will - must - offer one).
One such crisis presented itself to me one day in the form of one of our oldest and most loyal guests. Some people are capricious, going to extreme lengths to prove their money’s might: Mr Tewari was not such a person. He came to Paris twice a year, each time for a month. He booked out two of the hotel’s floors for himself and his suite, woke up at 8am sharp every day and came down for breakfast, just as sharply, one hour later. He only ever dined in his room - he trusted me with a choice of restaurant, and it was my responsibility to arrange for the chefs to deliver seven-course meals to his quarters. If he liked them, he nodded as he walked by. He only ever stopped to gush over dinner once: the restaurant Guy Savoy had just recently opened and, as was customary, the Clef d’Or had been invited to sample the cuisine. I had volunteered - even then, in 1980, Savoy’s cooking was exceptional, bordering on the otherworldly. My guest seemed to agree.
In hindsight, I should have known something would be different when Mr Tewari booked his usual floors for three straight months, then the entire hotel for another two weeks. His arrival that time was nothing like his usual muted countenance: he walked through the lobby excitedly, our general manager rushing to greet him. Tewari was a tall man and, though he usually walked unhurriedly, this time his great strides had Mr Alfonsi rushing to keep up.
He had been suspiciously cryptic over the phone, asking us to be ready for the celebration of a lifetime, but holding any other information back until he had landed:
“I don’t want you to plan without me”, he had explained. “I want to be involved in every single detail.”
And involved he was. Once we had finally gotten him to sit down with Mr Alfonsi and me, Mr Tewari explained his excitement: at the ripe old age of 38, his son was finally getting married. It was an unspeakable relief for our guest to see his offspring happy and ready to settle down, which was why he wanted a wedding like no other.
The ceremony would take place over three days, as was customary of Indian weddings, but the celebration would run for half a month, with events in Paris and across France - oh, and an elephant ride for the Baraat, of course.
The Baraat, or wedding procession, was to take place between the Arena and the Grand Palais, departing from the groom’s chambers - and to be clear, having sourced tigers, petting zoos and Komodo dragons before, the request for an elephant in itself was nothing out of the ordinary.
The rub was in the logistics. Our hotel was not one designed for elephant weight, and accommodating Tewari’s request would have required destroying our iconic marble lobby at the very least, to say nothing of the route to a room.
As for the procession itself, it would be one to remember: from the Arena it wound its way through the jardin des Tuileries, then through the place de la Concorde where it rode up the quais all the way to the Grand Palais - an itinerary fit for a king, but tough to clear for an elephant.
There was no way we could indulge our guest’s pachydermal plan: we would have to offer another option, one at least as grand as the original animal but requiring less city contracts and broken marbles to work and, while horses were an easy choice for the Baraat, we knew it simply wouldn’t cut it.
We asked Tewari for a few days to get our wedding plan together, rapidly dispatching all other tasks to hotel staff while Alfonsi and I scratched our heads and bit our nails in his office, desperately looking for an agreeable solution. Cars were simply out of the question, other animals frankly underwhelming, and any options on foot frankly risible.
Our deadline came before any good idea could and we found ourselves sitting with our guest in the empty gardens. We had arranged to deliver the news over high tea, hoping a generous helping of our guest’s favorite teacakes might soften the blow of our refusal.
We ran through the successes first: the Mehndi and Sangeet would take place in the palais de Versailles, and the Grand Palais had been booked for the wedding ceremony. We had proposed an itinerary for the remainder of the trip comprised of private visits to the most exquisite Parisian art collections and an escape to our sister hotel in Cannes for a few days, followed by a return into the city via boat. All in all, I heard myself say, it would be a wedding fit for a king.
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I finally got the inspiration I needed.
As for the elephant, I carried on, that might be arranged but were wondering if there was room to improvise: we were, after all, very close to the National Carriage Institute, and I had taken the liberty to inquire as to whether some of its more iconic pieces might be available. Wouldn’t it be grand if his son made an entrance in, say, Louis XIV’s Sun God carriage, or Napoleon’s?
Mr Tewari’s eyes lit up at my suggestion, and I shared a rapid, relieved sideways glance with Alfonsi: we had found our compromise, and the dreaded “no” had never been uttered - we were saved.
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