Once an unmissable luxury, the rise of food delivery apps means enjoying an in-room club sandwich may soon be a thing of the past
Now that most hotel rooms come with a fairly decent pod-type coffee maker, I rarely order room service of any kind. I once splurged on breakfast with someone I was dating, when we were staying at the George V in Paris. It felt the most glamorous, sexy weekend imaginable, so we’d ordered a full spread the night before, on a drunken whim.
At 9am the next morning we sat in our bathrobes staring at an array of gleaming steel cloches on a tablecloth-clad trolley, both so hungover that not a mouthful of the £100+ meal would stay down. Then there was the time I’d decided to skip a snack at London City Airport en route to the Dolder Grand in Zurich, intending to treat myself to dinner in the room. When I saw the price for a plate of chips (£15), I made do with an apple from the fruit bowl.
Room service is primarily the domain of the wealthy and the expense account. As hotels change according to what we want from them, will it survive at all? A minibar with free soft drinks is now standard (I remember in Las Vegas many moons ago, being told that if I moved anything in the fridge it would trigger a charge, so I asked for an empty fridge “for my essential medicine”, which I then stocked up with beer from a 7-Eleven).
Today, even the one per cent bristle at being ripped off for a bottle of Voss water. Unless you’re halfway up a mountain or on safari, all kinds of alternatives are in close proximity. I am reminded of the story told by actor Brenda Blethyn, when she was still up-and-coming, and staying at a hotel in Los Angeles for work. Horrified by the prices on the room service menu, she went out and bought a box of cereal and a carton of milk and ate her breakfast out of a vase by her bed using a shoehorn from the wardrobe.