From Glasgow to running the best hotel on the planet

If you’re a guest at Anthony Costa’s hotel, nothing is too much trouble.

Feel the need to have a game of ten-pin bowling at 2 am when the bowling alley’s closed?

No problem.

Fancy a slice of melon costing $500?

Anthony’s your man.

Then again, not so long ago the Hong Kong hotel Anthony was running was crowned Best Hotel in the World. Just as he won it, he decided to leave for life in Tokyo.

It’s a long way from Glasgow. But that’s exactly where Anthony got his inspiration from. Dad Peter ran the Pond Hotel in Great Western Road and Anthony spent much of his childhood there.

He followed Dad into the hotel trade and before long he was General Manager at the Watermill in Paisley.

These days, he runs Tokyo’s Mandarin Oriental. It’s one of the world’s top hotels and you can bet your boots he’s aiming to win that Best Hotel in the World accolade once more.

“Well, the great thing is there aren’t actually that many great, luxury hotels in the world. It’s competitive. I want to be right up there with the world’s best.”

Just what makes Anthony’s hotel so special? The Mandarin Oriental group is actually quite a small chain, but it rubs shoulders with the bigger boys of the hospitality industry. It’s where the Helen Mirrens, the Darcey Bussells and the Liam Neesons choose to stay on their travels.

“Well, you know, you’ve never seen a diamond the size of a brick, have you?” Anthony says. “We don’t have many hotels, but we want to be right up there with the best.”

So in the hotel world, small is beautiful. But I want to know how you really turn a hotel into the best in the world. That’s where the bowling alley story comes in.

“OK, a guest phones you up at 2 am, not understanding that they can’t go bowling because the bowling alley’s closed. So you’ve got to know someone who knows someone who knows someone who can open it up for you.

“Or you’ll get a guy who’s flying in to Tokyo and he’s forgotten his anniversary so he’s relying on you to get the most wonderful gift into the room for his wife’s arrival.

“And you’re sitting thinking, I’ve never met his wife. What do we put in the room? You get all these funny requests and you just have to deal with them.”

OK, so if my husband phoned you and said he’d forgotten our anniversary (not that he’d dare), what would you do to surprise me?

Sadly for me, it’s not a diamond the size of a brick. It’s all about the small touches of class.

“Well, that’s the hardest thing isn’t it? Because most people try to go over the top.

“It’s the subtle things that are really clever, though. So instead of giving the husband a registration card to fill in on arrival, we’d get him to sign a card saying ‘Dear Alison, I love you so much and the days since we’ve been together have been the best of my life . . .’

“And you’d get amazing roses and lilies in the room. Very subtle, just enough.”

He reels off a list of requests he’s had to deal with, from finding tickets to a sold-out baseball final to arranging special visits for tourists. Why not just say no?

“Because we’re masochists! I love taking on things that are hugely challenging and spending hours on something for not that much money at the end of the day. When you hand over those baseball tickets, or you see the smile of some little kid who’s just visited the fish market in Tokyo and witnessed the biggest tuna of the month being auctioned, there’s nothing better.”

The level of luxury and service provided in the Tokyo Mandarin Oriental is so good that on a quiet night it will set you back almost £1,000 to sleep in the Oriental Suite.

It’s no wonder celebs queue up to stay. But Anthony is annoyingly discreet. Try as I might, he won’t reveal any celeb gossip. He won’t even tell me if Helen Mirren prefers jam or butter on her toast, or who’s been a proper, pain-in-the-neck diva.

“No, no no I’m telling you nothing! Part of the reason celebs come to our hotels is for total privacy and discretion. Our customers are our bread and butter, so we don’t want to annoy them by talking about them.”

Anthony admits life in Tokyo has been a bit of a culture shock.

“Moving to Hong Kong was easier, because I’d been ordering number 23, 47 and 62 all my life! It was a British colony and easier to adapt.

“Japan is a world of its own, though, and I’m learning so much every single day,” he says.

“It’s fantastic and the culture is so different. They’re perfectionists. They want everything to be right, they even aim for absolute perfection when they’re making a coffee.

“There’s a shop next door where a little melon is $500 and a mango is $250. When I arrived, the owner gave me a beautiful basket of fruit I hate to think how much it cost. Don’t get me wrong it was lovely, but it wasn’t $500 worth of melon in my mouth. I’d rather have had golf clubs!” he jokes.

“Everything is so far removed from anything I’ve known before from sleeping on the floor at a ryokan (a Japanese inn) to soaking in an onsen (hot spring). It’s an amazing experience.”

He’s a long way from Paisley’s Watermill, or the hotel in Dundee he also ran. But he wouldn’t have missed those early years of his career.

“I might have been General Manager, but I cooked breakfast, polished and made beds,” he says. “That did me absolutely no harm it was a more humble way to start, but it means I know what it takes to run a hotel.”

Anthony’s wife Nicola and kids Ali, 17, and Rhea, 8, live in Kilmacolm. “I fly a lot on business so I pop into London and they’ll come and see me. We go on really good holidays, too. When you’ve got kids in school you can’t just keep moving them, it wouldn’t be fair.”

Who’d be his dream guest?

“Audrey Hepburn,” he says. “You know why? Just to have walked through the lobby with her. Just so when my mum called, I could have said I’m waiting on Audrey Hepburn!”

He left Hong Kong just as his hotel was crowned best in the world. Wasn’t it annoying to leave just as he won such a fantastic accolade?

“It was a nice way to leave no pressure for the poor guy who followed me!” he laughs.

You can bet your boots he won’t be satisfied until his Tokyo hotel wins the same award.

“I’ll stay until the job’s done,” he says.