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But the prime mover, the sine qua non, the matchless major and minor domo on which the virtues of these hotels depend is the concierge, one of Europe's most civilized creations. At the Westgate the incumbent is Salima Din, the daughter of a Nairobi hotelier, known to clients as Lady Westgate. Din can get a guest anything from a baby sitter to a barber to a gift-wrapped breakfast in bed; she has installed elaborate stereo equipment in a suite for Sammy Davis Jr., rustled up a British visa in two hours for a Saudi prince. She can perform these feats in Spanish, German, French, Swahili and several Indian languages. Jack Nargil, head concierge at Washington's Four Seasons, tries to anticipate his patrons' needs by referring to detailed dossiers compiled at check-in —"almost a biography," says one fre quent guest, who even frets that the ceremony is perhaps "a little overdone." In the course of duty, Nargil has conjured up an Easter basket at 2 a.m. on Easter morning and prepared a detailed route map for visiting joggers.
"The concierge does everything," ex plains Nargil's associate Karina Wilkey.
"If a guest asks for a pink elephant, you get him a pink elephant." That attitude might or might not have pleased Emerson, but it does help achieve what Pontchartrain Proprietor Albert Aschaffenburg considers to be the mission of the mini-hotel. Says he: "We try to make our guest something more than a number on the door . ' '