"Hello, could you please stop the sea?". The weirdest requests received at the Hotel. part 2.

There we go again with the most bizarre requests (or demands) received at the hotel, please read here and here if you missed the previous episodes. In the meantime, our reception is starting a real training course.

Maite Foriasky, head receptionist at The Setai hotel in South Beach, Miami, has had to work twenty-four hours to find and send to London… a tiger. With only two days notice. A wealthy English gentleman was in love with a charming American lady, who would have reached him "only if she could bring his cat with her". Working at the feline request even the staff of the Miami Metro Zoo.

Speaking of animals, a customer from the Middle East staying at Brown's Hotel in London, has asked the concierge Simon Thomas to send a very "challenging" gift to his address: twenty deers for the twenty-first birthday of his daughter. How could he possibly say no? "It's just our ordinary work", said James Little, head of reception at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, who once was flown to London to retrieve Millie, the dog of a customer.

In a Spanish hotel, a very demanding customer found so irritating the sound of the sea that he asked the staff to stop it, and at another hotel in the Ukraine they were asked to fill a bathtub with milk. Not any milk though, but a particular type sold in glass bottles. Oh the poor hoteliers… but in the end, after hours spent looking for the right brand, the customer was satisfied.

Raphael Pallais, a concierge in the new Plaza Hotel in New York, had to get some tarantulas to a customer who wanted to take them as a gourmet souvenir. "A true concierge should be able to remain impassive and professional," says Pallais: "For us, no request is odd, we prefer to call it original."

The same Pallais claims to have become something of a "magician of dreams", assisting clients to fulfill their deepest fantasies. In his CV there's a romantic dinner by candlelight in the middle of Central Park, complete with orchestra and waiters. Deceptively simple, except that the park guards do not allow the carrying out of scheduled or premeditated events. How to solve this problem? The food and all the material was delivered by air!

Postscript for romantic people: she accepted the marriage proposal.