Lavatory Attendants – those used to be the best-tipped members of staff and actually, believe it or not, a sought-after job. LA would hand patrons a fresh, often warm, towel after washing their hands, have a miracle chest of things from needles and yarn to reattach a button to heavy meds in case the lady of the house felt indisposed, and were the keepers of after shave, mouthwash, and whatever else the restaurant wanted to offer as fresher-uppers. Between “sessions” they’d refresh toilets, ensure that all sinks were dry, and rolls were plenty. A good LA would make more money than chefs or maitres d’ and would be heavily sought after.

The Cigarette Girl – I miss that one the most. A younger girl, often dressed a little less formally than the rest of the staff, with a box strapped to her front containing singles and packs of cigarettes, cigars, pipe utensils, and matches. Her job was to not only sell smokes but to also light cigarettes before the respective smokers could fish out their lighter and as the spy for both maitre d’ and chef. CG knew everything, saw everything, and was often the snitch that got waiters fired and patrons comped.

Nowadays, we know that if you come to town, chances are, you’re going to want to try one of the local restaurants (unless you return to your room at the end of the day exhausted – even then, you can order pizza or Chinese food delivered and are more likely to do so than order room service)  Because hotel restaurants can perform well at all only if they can draw customers from town (most can’t, and the sixty or so people who’d be staying in a 100-room hotel on an average night is a pretty thin, limited market, especially since most of them won’t want to eat in the hotel anyway), they’re a big overhead, low revenue factor and a drain on the profits from rooms. The same goes even more for hair salons, gift shops, and other retail. Marketing any of these things to people who live in town is tricky: a lot of people have a problem with the idea that something in a hotel is available to them, not just for the guests.

A hotel bar might have a little better luck drawing people from the area if they have an attraction – a band, a disco/dance floor, a singles bar (especially if it has a good ratio of women to men, or a reputation as a relatively easy ‘pickup’ bar), provocatively-dressed cocktail waitresses – but while a successful one might be a good revenue source, even then they cause security and dram shop problems for the hotel.

Part of it is our own fault – with some things, we got greedy and tried to turn it into not so much a service as a moneymaker, and since it didn’t play along, we consider it failed as a service as well. Long distance telephone is a case in point: some chains are just now bringing it back and offering it as a free thing, when they have a carrier that offers free nationwide long distance service. Back in the days before and right after deregulation, when LDX was something you took paying for for granted, it was a revenue source for the hotel, and we charged three times as much for the call as the phone company would charge us – a $27.00 charge on your bill for a call under a half hour to the next town wasn’t uncommon. Valet might be doable but most people wouldn’t know to ask for it – and those who do might not take a chance. I don’t blame them: the last time I used it in a hotel, I got zonked with a charge of $45.00 to do six shirts, and these were old shirts. The money would have been better spent to buy three new shirts from a local K-mart and just put the old ones in a plastic bag to take home, but I had no idea it would be that costly to do the shirts I had.

Many people assume, understandably, that anything offered in a hotel is going to have a high markup. If the profit margin were low enough to cover the headaches involved in providing the service, and still have it affordable, many services would be worth having as a guest convenience, and we could still make a small profit on it. But someone got greedy. Guests rebelled. Now we’ve discovered that, if the cost were low enough to just give it to you, we could do that as an added feature of the hotel, effort on our part is minimal on a lot of things, and the price of your room would cover it. Guests ate that up. It’s calledlimited service (Comfort Inn, Courtyard by Marriott, and the original owners of Hampton Inn). Or select service (started out as a Holiday Inn term, meaning some but not all services associated with a hotel are offered: it’s since collapsed with what used to be known as mid-scale limited service). Or focused service (a Hilton/Hampton Inn term).

We try to focus on what people really want.  The continental breakfast is a given: everyone uses it, the cost per room rented is low enough to be covered by the room charge. In a Hilton Garden Inn, food service may be a little more elaborate and there might be a small charge, but even then it’s more simple. Anything that can’t produce enough revenue to cover the cost – and headaches – involved in providing it, we try to find a graceful way to dispense with.

At any but the most upscale properties, bell service is easily dispensed with, most people don’t mind taking their own bags up if you have an elevator, and the bags are on casters or if you leave a few luggage carts around. The constant presence of tipped employees always having their hand out is an annoyance for many, anyway; and when the economy is good, not that many people want to work as a tipped employee unless they can make really good money in tips doing it.

A lot of it has to do with the proliferation of cars, and the way we market the hotel to the various sorts of people who drive them.  In the 50’s and 60’s, family automobile travel was a big thing, and that’s where most of the marketing was focused. When Mommy and Daddy hit the road with the kiddies and continue on to Florida in the morning as they check out, they didn’t want to make an additional stop at McDonalds (which didn’t start serving breakfast until the 70’s anyway), so you almost had to have a restaurant (this would also explain Days Inn and its gas station on premises). In the 80’s, the focus began shifting to business travelers – who usually had a rental car if they didn’t drive their own, who would rather go see the town anyway, and who could thus eat anywhere they want. So, the hotel restaurant, and other in-house service at all but the more upscale hotels, began to die off. Even now, food and beverage is really only doable if you have lots of meeting space, with the banquet business to justify it.

Full service properties – especially something upscale, luxury, and unique – will always have their place. But for most hotels, the game is going to be, we take the money you’re willing to pay, we use it to provide as much as we can of what really matters to you, we pass on providing things you’re not willing to pay for, and we hope to achieve the wisdom to know the difference. We can’t be everything to everybody anymore . . .
>
>

Finger bowls. We used to serve them at the table to guests at the Arizona Inn as they sat down, filled halfway to the top with warm water and a slice of lemon.
>

>

Dan Pepper, Logged a few million miles with a carry-on bag.

 .

Quality live entertainment in restaurants and hotel dining rooms.Some examples:

• Barbra Streisand (actor) used to sing in Detroit’s London Chop House and The Caucus Club http://www.caucusclubdetroit.com…
• Franz Benteler and the Royal Strings featured the “strolling Stradivarius” in the Consort Room atop Chicago’s Westin Hotelhttp://www.franzbenteler.com/
• George Gershwin gave the British premiere of Rhapsody in Blue at London’s Savoy Hotel in 1925 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sav…
• For 30 years, Cafe Society crooner Bobby Short held forth at New York’s Cafe Carlyle at the Carlyle hotel.
  >
  >
  Russ Cole, General Manager, Best Western Four Seasons, Traverse City, MI
  How about the all important one, great guest service?
  You don’t have to be a 4 star hotel to offer great guest service, even a 2 star motel/hotel can make you feel welcome when you walk in the door, greeting you with a big warm smile, making eye contact during the check in/check out, taking a few minutes to tell you about all the great things to do while in their city, making recommendations for restaurants, places to see, and telling you about all that the hotel/motel has to offer, where the ice machine & vending machines are, etc. Nowadays they hand you your keys, have you sign the reg card, swipe your credit card, and send you off. You don’t have to have a restaurant, bellman, and all that to offer great guest service.We are a little 50 room 2 star hotel and we even have a dedicated breakfast attendant who will deliver to your room your breakfast, free of charge. She loves it, because most of the time she gets tips! Our breakfast attendants are our last ambassadors to our guests before they leave and they are trained to ask guests how was their stay, what we could have done different or better to make their stay more enjoyable, what fun or interesting things did they get to do while in our city, and if they loved their stay hand them a business card with their name on it and on the back instructions on how to go toTripAdvisor to leave a review.We also invested about $500 in an assortment of specialty pillows, such as a buckwheat filled, micro bead, gel-filled, anti-snore, wedge, incline, bodyhuggable, memory foam, and a variety of others, and offer them free of charge, subject to availability, to all of our guests and we’ll even bring them to their room! When was the last time you stayed in a 2 star hotel that offered that kind of great service?If a hotel only hires, like I do, out-going, extroverted, super friendly people and with the proper training, your guests will notice and you’ll do well.

  Guest or customer service is missing in a lot of business and it is the least expensive thing you can do as an owner to improve and increase your business, but so many fail to see that or don’t have a clue. If you are a hotel or restaurant owner, or even if you own a retail store, when was the last time you had your friends or family be “undercover” shoppers/guests experience your business and report back their findings? Have you empowered and trained your employees to resolve customer/guest issues on the spot? Or do they just give the pat answer, “That will have to be oked by our manager”. If so, have your “undercover” shoppers/guests challenge your staff to see how they handle a situation. Did they offer a resolution that left them as a customer with a great experience to where they will come back?

  So in answer to your question, there are many amenities that have gone by the wayside, but also many that have replaced them, such as free wi-fi service, but I think the one most important one gone from hotels and restaurants is great guest service.

  >
  >

  Susan Deluzain Barry, Hotel lover. TL;DR hater.

  Pay telephones; bathtubs; shower caps (one of the most surprising things my hotel clients get complaints about on TripAdvisor!); and casegoods with drawers for holding your belongings.  For me, the most disappointing disappearing hotel feature is the old-fashioned lobby bar – no theme, only a pianist for entertainment, and men wearing ties tending bar.  The best hotel bars have this sense of intrique and mystery, that something interesting or sinister just might happen any minute.
  <
  <

  Mike Holovacs, 10 years front-facing experience: Front Desk, concierge, valet/door supervisi…

  Mike has 100+ answers in Hotels.

  It’s not dead yet, but room service is on the way out. Grab and go is the wave of the future.The room telephone as a source of hotel income. Cellphones have killed the room phone.Hotel movie choices are a thing of the past as well. Netflix and the overall concept of on-demand video killed the thought of paying for films (whether they are of the pornographic variety or not) in rooms.The concept of an uninspired hotel restaurant. Most hotels, even chains, now have gotten on board with local sourcing, craft beers, and their food having a story.

  Lobbies that do not invite meeting and sitting for extended periods. The lobby as a ‘third space’ is fast becoming the way things get done. Furniture and power outlets galore is the new way of thinking.
  >
  >

  Debasmita Bhowmik, There are many Tomorrows, but just one Today

  Live Music.
  >
  
  >
  There’s absolutely none of it anymore in restaurants today, despite the soothing atmosphere they created.There was a time in my childhood when everytime I accompanied my parents to a restaurant, they had a small band seated at a raised platform, performing some soulful music, or at least a guy with a piano singing John Denver songs. They usually sat out of the public eye, and sang sometimes even without people listening to them at all. I used to feel sad for them, because very few clapped whenever their performances got over. They usually worked in shifts, and I felt it was the most thankless job in the world. My mother always made it a point to clap at their songs, even if she was the only one, and whenever one guy’s shift got over, she would go over and appreciate his work. I could see the genuinely bright smiles they’d have on being praised by a pretty customer. Even though they weren’t directly acknowledged, people had got accustomed to the white noise.
  There was this one particular place I used to go, where there was a tall guy with a guitar and very beautiful lady who used to sing. After a few of their songs went unnoticed, the guy would motion to the girl to stop, and then he’d laze around for sometime. Almost in five minutes, people would start complaining about ‘something not being right’ (Many times they didn’t realise that it was the lack of music which was making the atmosphere uncomfortable). Instantly the guy would speak into the mic, ‘Missing the songs? Start with a li’l round of claps shall we?’ His trick worked because as soon as he said so, people would start laughing and sheepishly clapping, to which they’d resume their songs.
  I loved the way he conducted this musical setup, and later my mother would talk to him every time we went there.The live music has now been replaced by a very irritating version of playlists being played out, which are no match for their predecessor. The songs are either too loud or too sad, for anyone to enjoy a proper meal. I still wish they bring back the live in-house music at eateries. 😦
  >
  >

  Miles Dolphin, Owns and runs a small hotel in the UK.

  Miles has 80+ answers in Hotels.

  For Hotels: Cash payment at the end of your stay, This is now extremely uncommon, this is owing to the amounts of fraud and ‘early morning departures’.
  Cheque payment is rarely accepted any more as well even at the start of a stay, since banks are taking longer and longer to clear them.
  >
  >

  Johnathan Law, I own a diner

  Upvoted by Yair Livne, Studied at Le Cordon Bleu – Paris

  Not a feature so much as a position; the garde manger. Formerly the dude in charge of cold stuff in the kitchen and third in command after the sous chef. In the chain of command, it’s been replaced by the chef de cuisine for the most part and other duties, such as salad and sauce making have been handed off to more specialized cooks.
  Traditional duties that we associate the most with the garde manger, the making of cured meats, pates/terrines, and sausages, have all but gone extinct in the restaurant industry. Only the largest restaurants and a few select five star hotels will keep staff on hand for extensive cold meat prep. For the most part, they outsource to distributors, or specialized manufacturers. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t get high quality fresh sausage or smoked salmon anymore. There are many artisan manufacturers of these products nowadays. Most of them do a better job than an in house gardemanger could ever do.

  >
  >

  Michael Hraba, Hotelier, Skeptic, Writer, Futurist

  

  This is more about tech changes than hotels, but the PBX / Switchboard. I could go on, but this pic is great. Also, Magic Fingers vibrating bed machine for a quarter. That’s gone too. =) And what Mr. Jones said.Stocked Minibars are definitely dying… we do some cool versions, but the labor involved is just too much.And I miss the valet…. a shoe shine was always a treat.

  >
  >

  Garrick Saito, likes food

  Garrick has 36 endorsements in Food.

  I wish they had car hop service again.  You just don’t see it anymore…

  >
  

  

  

  >
  >

  Yan Vacher, Investment bank, GM of the Grand Hotel de Bordeaux (LHW)

  As for hotels, just want to stress that most of the independent luxury hotels try to keep on offering those features. From butlers, to dessert carts, to lounges designed like clubs, etc… Those features address what clients want and claim for, and derive from what those hotels are. Add some modernity in the way those features are delivered, and what you’ll get, and be rewarded for, is elegance. Experience, in a way.
  >
  >
  >
  >
  >