Staff at hotel chain Travelodge have unveiled some of the strangest requests they've received from guests this year - ranging from private BBQs with celebrity chefs to borrowing Meghan Markle's clothes.
Over the course of the last 12 months, an abundance of topics have been fired to concierges, desk staff and cleaners with regards to place names, local dishes, customs and traditions - but a few punters have had the bravado to come up with some mind-boggling requests.
For example, one customer visiting the Bath Waterside Travelodge requested that the hotel receptionist contacted The Fashion Museum to see if she could borrow the city's official 2021 Dress of The Year for her 40th birthday party.
The Mirror reports that all in all, the hopes were optimistic to say the least - given that the gown was a silk Giorgio Armani dress that Meghan Markle wore during her famous interview with Oprah Winfrey. Meanwhile in Canterbury, one guest was disappointed to hear that King Charles III would not in fact be teaching lessons at the King's School Canterbury during their stay in the historic city.
On a separate occasion, a young boy wanted the team at London's Waterloo Travelodge to arrange afternoon tea for his grandfather and Paddington Bear - while a confused guest in Edinburgh asked the hotel manager to clarify whether he had to bow down to Edinburgh Zoo's famous Sir Nils Olav, a king penguin who is mascot and colonel-in-chief of the Norwegian King's Guard.
A lot of bizarre requests were also put to staff around food - including a celebrity chef appearance. One couple staying at Newquay's Seafront Travelodge enquired about a private beachside barbecue with Rick Stein ahead of their visit. While a couple at Swansea Central Travelodge were relieved to learn that famous cuisine Laverbread wasn't actually made from volcanic lava.
Other famous requests include staff being asked to look after a Chow Chow while the owner went shopping, with another guest demanding an extra bedroom to function as a walk-in wardrobe.
A particularly inventive customer in Rhyl whose wife seemingly has a sweet tooth asked whether their bath could be filled with different flavoured scoops of ice cream as a birthday present.
This year’s audit also revealed a growing trend of customers asking hotel teams to record voice messages on their phones because they love their regional accents. A receptionist at Edinburgh Haymarket Travelodge was asked to send a voice note pretending to be Sean Connery to a customer’s Grannie as a birthday surprise.
At Liverpool Central Exchange Street Travelodge a bar worker was asked to record a customer’s voicemail in the voice of the late Cilla Black, who was their favourite celebrity. The customer specifically asked the bar tender to say ‘Surprise, Surprise’.
Shakila Ahmed, a spokesperson for Travelodge, said: “With more Britons holidaying on British shores than ever before our hotel teams have also received a high volume of interesting requests and questions especially around attractions, locations, local dishes, customs and traditions across our diverse British regions.
"Where possible, our hotel teams will go above and beyond to help customers as they relish a good challenge.
"However, there are some requests beyond their control such as getting ordained to officiate a wedding, getting the London Eye to rotate in an anti-clockwise formation, programming all the traffic lights in York to be green at midday for a bride to get to the church on time."
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