Good Service Still Lives!
Barb and I spent four nights at the legendary Peabody Hotel in Memphis
last month paying, I’m ashamed to admit, $317.22 a night for the room, and I
am here to tell you that I am now prepared to enthusiastically recommend a
first-class pampering and perfect experience in a beautiful old lodging
establishment.
You will find it at the General Francis Marion Hotel in Marion, Va.
Yes, that’s right. After spending an entire month on the road this summer
lamenting night after night the dearth and death of good hotel service, a
fair price for a room, a few little extras to make a stay special and even
some occasional pampering to justify today’s impressive room charges, we had
decided that all of those things had gone out of style with the latest turn
of the century, if not before.
Then, on the last night of our last week of vacation, headed home, tired and
getting a little frantic about finding a place to stay in a barren stretch
of I-81 at 9 p.m. in southwest Virginia, a lady at a service station
recommended the Francis Marion.
What a joy that hotel was! First of all, the façade was beautiful as we
drove up. Then, a fellow was right there with a cart for our luggage. The
desk clerk was attentive, going upstairs with us to make sure the room was
right. And the room was splendid, bedecked in antiques and colorful fabrics
and splendor. All the niceties that we had anticipated and failed to find at
the Peabody turned up double in Marion.
Can you even conceive in these times of a knock on your door just after you
get comfortably settled into your lovely accommodations, and opening it to
find a gentleman in a business suit carrying a tray with glasses of ice,
bottled water, and a plate of strawberries and orange slices, accompanied by
the best melted chocolate for dipping and mints for your pillows?
No, neither could we, but there it all was, and for free. Our room cost $85.
That charge also included breakfast. Eggs. Oatmeal. Yes.
So the column that I was planning to write all during my trip, about how you
just can’t get great service anymore when you travel, no matter how much you
pay, had to go out the window.
One disadvantage to being 50-plus is that we’re old enough to remember when
service was king in this country: when a flight attendant with Piedmont
Airlines would present herself before you bearing tongs that held a heated
towel, with which to wipe your hands after dining. And, yes, there was truly
fine dining on airlines in that day, too. Or remember the comforts of a fine
hotel like Tidewater’s Cavalier or the Chamberlain?
If you’re old enough to have those memories, you’re old enough to have
expectations that are rarely met anymore.
But good service and personal attention are still out there. Last year I
wrote about a stay we had at the old Stonewall Jackson Hotel in Staunton,
and now we’ve come across the Francis Marion—both dating back to the early
1920s and both only recently beautifully renovated and restored. And along
with the restoration comes a restoration of traditional good service and
attention.
Of course, Richmond’s own Jefferson Hotel sets the standard for such beauty
and service—and the folks who rank the country’s finest hotels agree. Barb
and I always have a friendly argument with our buddy Emily, a Memphis native
but a Richmonder for many years, as to the relative merits of the Peabody
vs. the Jefferson.
We’re prepared to admit to her in weak moments that maybe—just maybe, mind
you—the Peabody lobby might be a tad prettier than the gorgeous Jefferson
(mainly because the P. has candlelit tables everywhere and beautiful people
enjoying themselves there at all hours night and day, and then there are the
ducks, of course), and—true—the Peabody contains a number of classy little
shops. But both hotels are spectacularly beautiful, and Memphis’s finest
can’t touch our Jefferson for service—starting with the hour and a half wait
past check-in we had for the Peabody to get our room ready.
Here’s the deal: at the Jefferson, for about the same price as a room at the
Peabody, you get, it seems to me, a bigger room, your bed turned down, a
plush robe and comfortable slippers laid out, chocolate on your pillow,
complimentary access to pool and health club, complimentary coffee in the
lobby and a local paper and a USA Today.
At the Peabody, they add $10 a day onto your already expensive room cost to
cover those “extras” that you get for free at the Jefferson—and forget the
turndown and the chocolates at any price.
There’s more that’s special about the Jefferson, but you get the picture.
Let’s just say that we’re blessed to have a truly fine old hotel here in
town, and to have several others around the state.
Next year Barb and I want to try the Hotel Roanoke, where we have not stayed
for 30-some years. We’re saving our money and praying for chocolates.
Randy Fitzgerald is chair of the English and journalism department at Virginia Union University. He is a former Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist and University of Richmond administrator. His blog is www.randyfitzgerald.blog.com.
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