Hotels play the perfect game

“City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style, in the air there’s a feeling of Christmas....”

The guest wasn’t arriving from Ohio until Sunday, but by Tuesday, Michael Romei had heard from her five times. She was bringing her whole family to the Waldorf-Astoria for the full holiday experience in New York and wanted Romei, the chief concierge at the fabled hotel on Park Avenue, to orchestrate a perfect itinerary.

She wanted “a really good restaurant,” the “best” show, shopping tips and plans for before and after each event.

“There is definitely more demand from travelers this time of year,” said Romei, who wears a set of gold keys on each lapel. “They want perfection.”

It’s been a rough couple of years for the hotel industry here. New Yorkers have heard ad nauseum that nothing-will-ever-be-the-same after the terror of 2001, which it won’t be. But the people who live off tourism have had a particularly rocky time with occupancy that fluctuates every time a new terror alert has beamed from Washington.

But there is hope this season. Hoteliers are expecting a hectic few weeks before Christmas that will come close to bringing them back to where they were in December 1999, the last heady holiday before the double whammy of the dot-com bust and the Sept. 11 attacks.

For holiday 2004, there are two facts about a New York hotel room that visitors should know: It is breathtakingly expensive, and somebody is in it.

The average daily rate is hovering around $240 a night and the average weekly occupancy around 80%. But don’t believe the statistics. Just go online or call a three-star hotel for a room for, say, this coming Saturday night. If it’s available--and that’s a big if -- it’ll run you about $600 plus 13.6% tax.

All last week, calls and faxes and e-mails from guests inundated concierge desks’ in Manhattan, each one expecting perfection. Many are coming from across the sea, their pockets bulging with valuable pounds or euros.

Still more are Americans staying closer to home because their dollars don’t go far in Paris or Rome. And most aren’t businessmen on a boondoggle but tourists paying dearly out of their own pockets.

“Strings of street lights, even stop lights, blink a bright red and green, as the shoppers rush home with their treasures....”

By 7:30 Thanksgiving morning, Romei’s voicemail box was filled with frantic calls from international guests frustrated that nothing was open. And like every other concierge in this city, he was bending over backward to please. Luckily, FAO Schwarz, the famous Fifth Avenue toy shop that filed for bankruptcy last year and was sold, had broken with tradition and reopened on Thanksgiving morning. By afternoon the bellmen’s carts were spilling over with shopping bags, said Romei.

“Sometimes I shake inside, but nobody knows that,” he said, explaining his extraordinary calm. He is a compact man of 46 who lives to please. He clasps his hands together as if to hide even a hint of the tension that this holiday season is causing him. “I do try to be absolutely perfect in the way I deliver myself.”

There was that word again. Perfect. Preparing to close out the biggest quarter of their year, the hoteliers kept invoking it. At Rockefeller Center, the 30,000 lights blinked on just “perfectly” at the tree ceremony Wednesday, said one general manager of a Midtown hotel. The new crystal star perched high above 57th Street at Fifth Avenue beams with “perfection,” gasped another. Oh, and that piney smell along Broadway as the first trees were laid out on the sidewalks for sale last week was just “perfect” too.

Along hotel row on Lexington Avenue in the 50s, the staffs started rolling out their holiday amenities. The Intercontinental was serving hot cider in the lobby; the W’s “whenever, whatever” department was staffed to wrap and send presents for no extra charge; the Waldorf was stocked with chocolate Santas and hot, mulled cider for returning clients like the elderly woman who every year crosses the East River from Queens for two nights of hotel luxury with her dog, Charley.

“I will take a look at her room before she gets here, put something extra in it,” said Romei. “Even though we’re busy, it’s important to recognize loyalty.”

“Hear the snow crunch, see the kids bunch, this is Santa’s big scene, and above all the bustle you hear, silver bells, silver bells

Over at the posh new Mandarin Oriental, there was no tradition to fall back on. Open only a year, the staff was trying to figure out how to deliver the perfect holiday experience to guests shelling out $900 a night for a park view. Clearly, the stakes are high this time of year. “It’s like trying to drive in a densely populated forest without hitting a tree,” said general manager Rudy Tauscher. “We all want this to be a great season.”

One morning last week, the printout of guests due to arrive in his lobby included several CEOs, a company president, an important professor, a minister of finance from Latin America, a couple of royals. His plan for the day included personally greeting every one.

“This is an environment where people want to connect,” said Tauscher, who is 46, German-born and a skilled hospitality professional. “We want to be high-tech, high touch.”

Nothing matters more than setting the right tone, and his staff is now weighing whether to offer homemade Christmas cookies or Fifth Avenue wrapped chocolates. They are painfully aware that elsewhere, five-star staffs are brainstorming new ways to present cider, bundle boughs and give away everything from personalized stationery to makeovers and massages.

But all of those excruciatingly executed amenities will melt away faster than Frosty if a CEO is told he can not delay checkout until 6 p.m. or if an elevator button sticks. Hence, the handwritten to-do list in Tauscher’s breast pocket: replace tattered trash can in bathroom, unstick elevator button.

Back at the Waldorf, Romei has his own to-do’s piling up in a leather-bound notebook. His guests are always high maintenance, but he described their expectations this season with three words: “more, more, more.”

One request seems particularly preposterous. A guest arriving next week wants a private tour of the Museum of Modern Art. He may as well have asked for a round-trip ticket to Venus. The museum has just reopened after a mammoth and much-ballyhooed two-year renovation; the crowds are record-breaking, and you really have to know somebody who knows somebody to get a private tour. But Romei has no time to think of all that. He’s too busy pondering how he might fulfill another guest fantasy.

“I know it’s possible ...” he mused. And if he pulls it off -- as he no doubt will -- rest assured, it will be perfect.