The hotel employee dropped to his knees with the type of speed and precision that would've made all the retired generals and lieutenants in the nearby military-mad city of San Diego proud.
I'd groggily overfilled my coffee mug at the Embassy Suites La Jolla breakfast buffet and was failing miserably in my attempt to get to a nearby table without spilling some of the overflow to the ground. By the time I was halfway through my attempt to apologize to the uniformed gentleman for being such a slob, he was wiping up the spilled coffee with a towel, all the while telling me not to worry about it. Good morning.
One can get a pretty good idea about a hotel's service level -- not to mention the character of its clientele -- if one is willing to wake up early enough. On one side of the spectrum are classic luxury properties such as San Francisco's Palace Hotel or New York's Waldorf Astoria, whose Sunday brunches offer more formality than most weddings, not to mention chocolate fountains, live entertainment, massive raw bars and a tab that will knock a family back a few hundred dollars for the experience.
But if you stay in enough hotels, you'll find that the morning dining options truly run the gamut, reflecting a lodging industry that still can't seem to figure out how breakfast fits into its grand scheme.
Take Starwood's Le Parker Meridien, for example. In addition to its prime midtown Manhattan locale, the hotel boasts Norma's, whose sophisticated, relatively pricey takes on the breakfast classics lands the restaurant on the Zagat guide's list of top New York breakfast restaurants every year.
A few blocks across town, the Pod projects more of an indie vibe for breakfast, featuring a minimalist, inexpensive menu of locally produced bagels, organic fruit and yogurt dishes, and attracting a steady stream of younger internationals and hung-over hipster types to its communal tables and urban garden.
Go to a budget-chain hotel in the heartland like the La Quinta just north of Austin, Texas, and the free breakfast is far more of a utilitarian buffet affair for its mix of families and road-dog business professionals, complete with a do-it-yourself waffle machine that the kids will invariably get messy and a brusque shutdown the minute the clock strikes 9 a.m.
Out West, Marriott's Courtyard San Diego Solana Beach takes a more middle-ground approach, reflecting the locale's beachy vibe with a bistro that offers a mix of midprice traditional egg dishes and healthier offerings as well as access to a poolside patio to soak up the early morning rays and saltwater air.
Hilton's Embassy Suites kicks the freebie breakfast up a solid notch with touches such as made-to-order omelets, three types of coffee syrups and the aforementioned can-do service approach. And it's undoubtedly a family affair, complete with multiple generations, lots of languages spoken and a fair amount of admonitions from travel-weary parents.
So when my 4-year-old daughter managed to rip off a breakfast burp that would make a truck driver (not to mention her father) proud and whose sheer volume caused it to reverberate off the balconies of the Embassy Suite's 12-story indoor atrium, scarcely an eyebrow was raised.
Either way, how a hotel handles breakfast is a key factor in both the guests' perception of the property and the operator's ability to stay afloat. While food and beverage sales as a percentage of total U.S. hotel revenue have been steadily declining during the past three decades, they still account for about 27% of sales, according to PKF Hospitality.
Paradoxically, while many hotels are pushing their bar-and-lounge environment as a way to generate more non-room revenue, more guests are expecting free food in the morning.
When it came to the most important hotel amenities sought by U.S. travelers, free breakfast trailed only free WiFi and trumped features such as loyalty points, airport shuttle service and an on-site spa, in a TripAdvisor survey published last year.
All of which left at least one American traveler a little dumbfounded during a recent trip across the pond, where a visit to the JW Marriott in Cannes revealed a continental breakfast that ran a tidy 26 euros, or about $34. That led to a morning ritual that involved a half-mile trek through the Mediterranean's winter winds down the Boulevard de la Croisette to an establishment that sold a small coffee, a little bitty pancake and an egg sandwich for the equivalent of about 7 bucks. It was a McDonald's, of course.
God bless America.
Contact Danny King at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @dktravelweekly.