Hotel Guest Makes Hilarious ‘Unusual’ Request, Staff Delivers

A hotel’s surprisingly obliging response to a guest’s rather odd request has gone viral on Reddit.

The post, shared by Candy Johnson under the Reddit username parkinglotnachos, explains that she asked for a photo of an actor in her room, and has garnered 12,000 upvotes since she uploaded it during her stay on October 30.

Johnson booked into the historic SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark—now known as the Radisson Collection Royal Hotel—on her 55^th birthday. A caption shared with the viral post says, “I asked for an 8×10 photo of Alfonso Ribeiro in my room months ago and they did it!! BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!”

The post shows an image of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star on a marble-style round table next to a piece of cake and some drinks.

Johnson, who is from Long Beach, California, but lives in Sweden, told Newsweek that she had been inspired by an article she came across around 10 years ago about someone who made the same request at another hotel. “I have always wanted to try it because I loved The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Carlton [Ribeiro’s character in the TV show] and thought it was a fun idea.”

After making her request to the hotel, Johnson said they responded by email saying “they would try their best to accommodate us.”

“I thought there was a slim chance it would happen and actually forgot until we arrived,” she said, adding that she “laughed for 10 minutes straight” upon seeing the photograph in the room.

The SAS Royal Hotel was designed by the late Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen, who is also known for the “Egg” chair, and it was the first skyscraper in Denmark’s capital at the time of its opening in 1960. The building was “designed as a sleek rectangular volume, whose only ornamentation is the grid structure of the light curtain-wall exteriors and the large glazed sections that mirror the movements of the clouds in the sky,” the designer’s official website notes.

Johnson’s viral Reddit post comes as hotel occupancy in the U.S. is expected to hit 63.6 percent this year, marking “a significant improvement” over 2020’s historic low of 43.8 percent, according to a 2024 report by the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA).

The AHLA report found that friendliness and cleanliness continue to be “essential to positive guest experiences.” Asked what steps hotels should take to ensure that their guests enjoy a positive experience, consumers “ranked guestroom cleanliness, property cleanliness, and friendly staff as the most important factors,” according to the report.

Johnson, who moved to San Diego in 1990 and lived there for 19 years, began working for a digital marketing agency startup in 1996 answering phones and became the operations director five years later. When she moved to Sweden her job became remote, which was “unheard of in 2009,” she said, and she still works there.

“I had planned this trip for months,” Johnson said of her visit to Denmark, adding that she’s “always wanted to stay at the hotel as its designer, Arne Jacobsen, is someone I respect very much.”

Among the highlights of her one-night stay was a tour of Room 606 “which has been restored to the original design,” she noted.

Johnson said she originally wanted a corner room, but the hotel receptionist “talked us out of getting a nicer room and I didn’t know why until we got there and saw the cake and photo of Alfonso.”

She added: “The room was very nice with a king-sized bed, modern bathroom with heated floors and best view of the city I’ve ever seen.”

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