Now I know what it must have felt like to witness crucial moments in history: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo; Hitler marching his troops back into the Rhineland; and it was exactly like I felt when I heard the Beatles were breaking up. A shiver of apprehension. A tremor of fear. A sense that the world was tilting on its axis. An instinct that it “would never be glad, confident morning again”. It came when I learned that the New York Hilton Hotel is to abolish room service.
Back to the future
My whole life – or at least the large part of it spent in hotels – flashed before my eyes. Abolish room service – why not turn back the clock entirely? Have men with red flags walk in front of cars? Produce jerky films in black and white with no sound? Re-install gas lighting and put suffragettes on the treadmill?
This heralds a return to the Dark Ages. And don’t comfort yourself with the thought that it’s only one hotel; this is a scent of the ominous future, carried on the hospitality industry breeze. This is the first wedge, the foot in the door, the exception that will eventually prove to be the rule. In the inevitable trend of corporate domino theory it will not be long before every major hotel chain abolishes room service. And you know why? It’s a money saver.
Staff are needed to take food to a room, and staff are paid wages. Get rid of the service and you get rid of the wage expense too. Look at many hotel receptions now: you can check in without speaking to a soul; just press a screen, swipe a credit card, take a spewed-out plastic door key and go straight to a room. The more that hotels – like supermarkets – can be run without people, the higher the profit margin.
Roomful of pleasure
So this is a, hopefully premature, goodbye hymn to room service – a paean of praise to the clinking linen-covered trolley with its little vase and solitary flower, its shiny silver food warmers, crystal glasses and folded napkins.
The vast bed is just a lover-entangled fall away from the condensation-rimmed bucket in which the Bollinger nestles
It’s a mournful goodbye, redolent with nostalgia for that most hedonistic of pleasures; choosing not to dress up, go downstairs and sit alone at the restaurant’s worst table for solitary singles next to the toilet door, but instead to sit quaffing wine and scoffing the best a good hotel can offer (which is frequently extremely good) in the privacy of your own room.
Then there’s – how can one put this delicately? – the naughty pleasure of dining a deux with a loved one, or even some newly met passing ship in the night. With a beauty across the portable dining table and beyond, through that hopefully full-length window, a view of Hong Kong harbour, Manhattan, the Sydney Opera House or Table Mountain, there’s a who-the-hell-cares-what-it-costs feeling in your heart. Best of all, the vast bed is just a lover-entangled fall away from the condensation-rimmed bucket in which the Bollinger nestles, shining and clinking in the settling ice.
Who among us has not at one time or other luxuriated in that almost fin-de-siècle abandonment – or at least wanted to. The thought of no longer being able to dial a number, and forty-five minutes later answer the knock on the door and watch the goodies wheeled in, saddens the heart.
I know I’ve poked fun at room service in the past, but now it seems bathed in a roseate glow, like a fading love affair. Even the bad bits seem good when you face losing them. No more intimate tristes with some delicious nosh (and companion if lucky), sluiced down by a good Moulin-à-Vent or Chablis? Unthinkable.
Sure, at the moment this development is just a tiny leak in the concrete, but if not immediately plugged, the whole edifice of hotel-life-as-we-know-and-love it, will eventually come crashing down like the Mohne Dam worked over by 617 Squadron.
The time to protest is now. Next time you stay at a Hilton (or, for that matter, any other international hotel chain) make a point of telling them: “Stop room service and I’ll be staying elsewhere.” Take one of their satisfaction questionnaires and write: “Do NOT get rid of room service.”
We know what happened after Sarajevo, and the Rhineland. And what followed The Beatles break-up. So act now, before it’s too late. Call for room service and tell them to carry on delivering!
