A guest staying in the penthouse of the Grace Bay Club in the Turks and Caicos remembered one night that his wife’s birthday was the next day, and that he had forgotten to buy her a present. The hotel called security at the island’s airport and the owner of Royal Jewelers, a jewelry store with a duty-free shop there. The airport’s security guard let the guest into the airport, past security, where he met the shop owner, who opened his store for the guest. It was a productive night for both: The guest bought over $12,000 worth of rings, bracelets and earrings, made of precious stones, for his wife who never realized he was gone.

For more information: Grace Bay Club

The parents of a bride getting married at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago, a Four Seasons hotel, left their cosmetic bag in the taxi they took there. The bride’s mother’s only pair of contact lenses was in the bag, and she didn’t want to wear her glasses to her daughter’s wedding. The hotel’s concierge staff got in touch the mother’s optician in California, obtained her contact lens prescription, and had new lenses made and delivered to her within two hours, just before the wedding.

For more information: Ritz-Carlton Chicago

Tommy Dean, the senior concierge at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin, once arranged a sunrise hot-air balloon ride for a young couple; the man intended to ask his girlfriend to marry him once they were aloft. There was one problem, however: Afraid to take the ride, she refused to go up in the balloon. Panic-stricken, the man called Dean from the balloon. Their solution: That night, after a romantic dinner at the hotel, the couple returned to their room, where they found a miniature hot-air balloon—made by Dean from a truffle box that contained the engagement ring, and a helium-filled, red balloon—floating around. Dean said the girlfriend “howled with laughter at the sight of it, but her laughter turned to tears of joy when she discovered the ring and the real meaning of the entire day’s events.”

For more information: Four Seasons Hotel Austin

The recent iPhone launch was insane not just for regular folks, but for celebrities, too. One female pop star staying at the Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park, arrived at the hotel with a new iPhone, but had no idea how to use it. Unwilling to brave the crowds to get a lesson at the nearby Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, she asked the hotel’s chef concierge, Frederick Bigler, for help. His solution: He sent a hotel page to the store for an iPhone tutorial; the page then returned to the hotel and gave the singer a lesson in the privacy of her suite.

For more information: Ritz-Carlton New York

The Dorchester in London was the home away from home for the 17-member production crew, from New Zealand, that was completing the music editing for “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.” They enlisted the hotel’s “E-butlers” to create a secure network to communicate with their colleagues in New Zealand; security was paramount, due to the sensitive nature of the film’s contents. The film later went on to win two Oscars.

For more information: The Dorchester

Salvador Dali was a regular guest at the Meurice Hotel in Paris, always staying, with his two pet ocelots, in rooms 106 and 107, which face the Tuileries Garden. The rooms have high ceilings, parquet floors and 18th-century, Louis XVI-style furnishings. Dali once asked the hotel’s concierge staff to bring an entire herd of sheep to his rooms, so he could shoot blank bullets at them; on another occasion, he asked the concierges to catch flies for him in the Tuileries, paying them five francs for each bug caught.

For more information: Meurice Hotel

The CEO of a small-tech company staying at the Ritz-Carlton, Key Biscayne, accidentally left documents required to close a $500 million dollar deal in a fingerprint-controlled security box at his office in New York. Once he learned of the guest’s predicament, Alex Martin, the hotel’s chef concierge, swiftly arranged for a sedan to pick him up and take him to a private jet that flew him back to New York. The guest was met there by another sedan, which brought him to his office to retrieve his documents, then back to the airport for his return flight to Miami. Martin arranged for the guest’s suit to be pressed, and sent it, with fresh towels and bottles of water, in another sedan that met the guest upon his arrival in Miami. The guest changed in an airport locker room, and returned to the Ritz-Carlton with an hour to spare before the meeting where he closed his deal.

One of Detroit’s big three automakers hosted its largest car launch ever, for SUVs, at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin, in part because the Texas Hill Country’s two-lane blacktops were ideal for showing off the vehicles’ smooth handling. After months of planning and enormous expenditures, the automaker sent the first wave of SUVs to an off-road site, not realizing the people living there would object. The automaker asked the hotel’s senior concierge, Tommy Dean, for help; he jumped into an SUV and drove it to the house of the chief protestor. Dean said he spent the entire day in the man’s home, “listening, empathizing, begging, agreeing. I concocted a scenario in which the automaker would help the neighborhood upgrade its roads and install street signs if it could just let the launch proceed for the next few days. It worked, he agreed, and everybody was happy.”

For more information: Four Seasons Hotel Austin

Staying at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago before competing against the Chicago Bulls, the New York Knicks decided one Saturday that they needed a Sunday morning pre-game practice before they played the Bulls Sunday afternoon. They asked the chef concierge, Jon Winke, if they could use the hotel’s ballroom as their court. With the help of the Ritz-Carlton’s banquet staff, Winke worked overnight to break down a wedding that had been held in the ballroom, and then gave the Knicks staff masking tape to create a makeshift court, on the ballroom carpet, where the Knicks were able to practice their plays.

For more information: Ritz-Carlton Chicago

A new mother staying at the Ritz-Carlton, South Beach with her husband and two-month-old daughter was experiencing great pain breastfeeding her baby for the first time. As per her doctor’s orders, she asked the hotel’s concierge, Kristin Koslow, to deliver iceberg cups—two hollowed-out heads of cold iceberg lettuce—to her room , which she then used as icepacks to reduce the pain and swelling. Koslow, who is not yet a mother herself, said that while the request was a bit unorthodox and raised a few eyebrows in the hotel’s kitchen, it worked.