What to Expect From a Stay at a Luxury Hotel

There's nothing quite like staying at an outstanding luxury hotel. The service is excellent, the facilities superb and the entire experience leaves you feeling relaxed, invigorated and utterly spoilt. Yet there are plenty of so-called luxury hotels out there who are not worthy of the title, who fall short in some critical area and leave their guests wanting more.

Every hotel is unique, and there is no checklist or official seal of approval that marks out a great hotel from a merely average one. But if you are staying at a hotel that claims to be one of the best, there are certain philosophies of excellence that you should expect to be followed. Whether you are staying at a tiny boutique hotel with only a dozen rooms or a massive 5 star resort hotel, here are some of the things you should look out for to really test the quality of your accommodation.

Superb attention to detail

What marks out a true luxury hotel from the pretenders is the attention to detail. There are a thousand and one little ways in which a luxury hotel can demonstrate its quality, from a complimentary bottle of champagne when you arrive to a main hall that seems like a work of art. The best hotels are those which take great pains to instil quality in every possible way, and which even the most hard to please perfectionist would struggle to find fault with.

Highly personalised service

A truly great luxury hotel stands or falls on the quality of its staff. They should be polite, knowledgeable and helpful, but above all you should be treated like an individual, not as just another patron. If you have individual needs or desires, staff at a true luxury hotel will work hard to accommodate it. Not all will go as far as the staff at President Wilson Hotel in Geneva, who once hired a crane to get a requested bed up to the penthouse suite, but if you stay at a luxury hotel, expect personalised service!

Luxurious accommodation

If you have paid luxury hotel prices, you should expect your room to be of the highest quality. To say the least, the room should be spotless when you arrive, but more than that, it should exude luxury and comfort from every corner. In many boutique hotels, each room is individually designed for that personal touch, but whether your room is one of a kind or one of a hundred identical rooms, a luxury hotel room should ideally leave you with nothing to complain about.

Top quality facilities

The sense of luxury shouldn't stop at your room. Luxury and boutique hotels often have additional facilities attached to them - restaurants, spas, gyms and so on. If they do, then they should be of same quality that you would expect from your room and the main hotel. If a hotel has outstanding rooms but a mediocre restaurant attached to it, or a perfunctory sports centre or hotel bar, it is a missed opportunity to truly dazzle its guests.