At the St Regis Beijing, there are many things you can ask your personal butler to do – unpack your suitcase, draw you a bath, shine your shoes and get your suits pressed.

So, asking them to clean your suitcase as well is not a case of over-stepping the boundaries of guest-butler etiquette – in fact they are more than happy to do it.

Try asking the same thing in some other hotel and you might get the same stoney reaction as when you ask for an extra pair of bedroom slippers.

Here, though, your suitcase will be whisked away, fumigated, stripped of all offending worn out stickers and thoroughly restored to a pristine state. If something needs to be fixed, they will find out the cost and ask for your go-ahead.

Then when it is ready, it’s delivered to your room, complete with a white rose tucked neatly into the handle.

Is it any wonder, then, that dignitaries and celebrities alike love this hotel for its discreet service and luxury touches.

There's even more to like now that it’s just gone through a US$30 million makeover that has seen all its rooms turned into luxurious getaways designed specifically to give it a residential rather than a hotel feel, says its general manager Cary Grey.

“The rooms are meant to look like you’re at home,” he explains. There’s also a higher proportion of suites – 102 in all, luxuriously appointed in contemporary Chinese style with a separate living area and upscale furnishings.

But it’s also the service that makes the hotel stand out – Jackie Chan is apparently a great fan of the hotel because he can go to the Press Club bar for a drink and no one bothers him by asking for photographs or anything. Heads of state also make it a point to stay there, especially when food safety is taken so seriously that there is a permanent team in place to ensure that suppliers have all the right certification, and wherever possible, organic ingredients are used, adds Mr Grey.

And of course, there’s also the Bloody Mary welcome ritual. The Bloody Mary was created in the 1920s by an American bartender, Fernand Petiot at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris.

The original recipe was just vodka and tomato juice but when Petiot moved back to New York to take up a cocktail post at the St Regis New York, he added cayenne pepper, worcestershire sauce, tabasco and lemon juice to spice it up for native New Yorkers.

It’s since become a tradition in all St Regis hotels to serve it as a welcome drink and, depending on the location, each hotel comes up with its own little touches – the St Regis in Singapore, for example, adds chilli powder to theirs.

In St Regis Beijing, the special treatment goes beyond the Bloody Mary ritual. Every Friday evening, butlers carry out a champagne ritual in its stunning, high-ceilinged lobby where candles are lit and champagne bottles are sliced open with a quick flick of a sword and much drama.

The best part of this is that if you’re in the lobby at the time, you get to enjoy the champagne on the house.

Dining-wise, Danieli’s has been voted top Italian restaurant for good reason – it offers some very authentic Italian cooking with a bit of a modern twist like chopped tuna tartare and fillet of beef with porcini sauce and polenta.

Don’t miss the deliciously decadent chocolate tart lined with a crispy cookie crust. If you like nutella, it’s nutella tart heaven. The Chinese restaurant Celestial Court holds its own too – having a chef from Hong Kong means you can expect fine classical Cantonese cuisine and very good dimsum too.

St Regis may not be hip and even comes across as old-fashioned and stodgy. But it has that classic, old-world glamour about it that attracts a certain monied clientele that eschews gimmicks for reliable luxury.

What they want is what they get. 

This article was first published in The Business Times on Nov 29, 2008.