It turns out that the rich really are different from you and me.


Take investment banker Robert Podesta. He's a busy guy. And he travels
 a lot. And, yes, he's well off. A while back, he stayed at the Four
 Seasons Hotel in San Francisco. He got a great night's sleep so he
 bought the bed.

Sometime later, Podesta was staying at the New York Palace Hotel. He
 really enjoyed the Egyptian-cotton sheets, the down comforter, the
 oversized down-and-feather pillows and even something called a duvet,
 so he bought them, too.

And Podesta's not alone. My exhaustive examination revealed that more
 and more rich people don't just go home with memories of their stays
 at the fanciest hotels in town.

"I'm busy, my wife's busy, so this is how we shop," Podesta said. For
 him, $75 for a Palace pillows (full disclosure? I've slept on one of
 their pillows. It's a great pillow) is nothing compared to the value
 of the time it would take him to go shopping like the rest of us.

"Pillow or mattress shopping is hard," said Podesta, clearly not a guy
 who leaves off the last "s" for savings. (But he has a point. Ever
 shop for a bed? Mattress companies have more names for their products
 than Eskimos have for snow.)


Although not widely promoted, most top-end hotels will sell you their
 beds -- typically a "hotel grade" version that's not available in
 stores. And most don't jack up the prices, passing along their
 wholesale discount as a courtesy to their fashionable guests.


The W Hotel, for instance, sells a plush Simmons mattress called "The
 Westin Heavenly Bed." A king-sized mattress, box spring, frame,
 pillows, pillow cases and that thing called a duvet will set you back
 $3,000.

The hotel claims its "Heavenly Bed" goes headboard-to-headboard with
 the Four Seasons Hotels' famous "Four Seasons Bed," a souped-up Sealy
 that costs $2,000 and features 933 individual coils (that's a lot of
 coils). The Four Seasons in New York sells a dozen a month alone,
 thanks to recent testimonials by noted bed user Julia Roberts and
 noted reader Oprah Winfrey.

"We even have one guest who bought one and asked us to store it for him
 so that every time he stays here, he can sleep on his own bed," said
 Susan Zaki, the hotel's purchasing director.

But beds and sheets pale by comparison to what guests at the Soho Grand
 walk away with. When you check in, you're asked you'd like them to
 send up a bowl of live goldfish -- which you can keep when you check
 out. But it's not always so easy.

"One guest's goldfish got sick," said Tony Fant, the hotel's boss. "You
 could tell. He was listing. Anyway, we called a doctor who put
 antibiotics in the water and the fish was fine."

Robert Podesta should consider staying at the Soho Grand next time he
 wants a pet. He's a busy man, after all.

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gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net