Our room’s not available?” I bellow in panto-horror. I don’t believe it. It’s 12.15pm, we’re all tired from our early flight, and our room’s not available.

I’ve got seriously high expectations. This is Barcelona’s Hotel Arts, after all. It’s just won the overall global prize at the Ultimate Service Awards (“the only global award scheme to recognise and applaud outstanding service”). According to the guests who voted, this hotel’s service is unparalleled.

So I want the receptionist wafting me with ostrich feathers. I want a harpist on call every time my blood pressure breaks 120. I want smothering. I want pampering. I want love.

Priscilla, our guest ambassador, is lovely, but she doesn’t have any ostrich feathers. Nor will she give us a high-floor, nonsmoking, king-size room immediately. The three of us chew the fat a bit. We can have a second-floor room now — or wait three hours for a coveted level 18 job.

“Go on, there must be a room,” I say, like a broken record. “I specifically requested a high-level room.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Rudd. I just can’t. Check-in is at 3pm”.

Bang. She’s blown it. It was all going so well. We’d turned up three hours early on a busy bank holiday. She’d give me a room, but not the one I wanted. Irritating, but fair enough; I haven’t got a leg to stand on. I’ve arrived too early to have a leg to stand on. We all know that, so why did she have to point it out?

Stroppy Wife isn’t quite stamping her feet but she does say that if she can’t have her room now, she wants to shower and change now instead. If I were Priscilla, I’d probably give her a slap, but it’s no problem — she’s whisked off to the changing room to ablute. I’m ushered into the beautiful lobby and furnished with lashings of mint water by the wonderfully smiley, ray-of-light Sergi. They’re making the best of a bad start.

TO WHILE away the wait, I try to annoy the concierge. A concierge, of course, is the key to a good hotel. A good concierge will get you the best table in town, fix the best entertainment and be able to arrange anything, absolutely anything, you need to improve your holiday.

Let’s start with the impossible. “Can you arrange a table at El Bulli tonight?” I ask.

El Bulli, an hour or so outside Barcelona, is considered by many to be the world’s best restaurant. Bagging a table with six hours’ notice would be trickier than sorting a seat beside the net judge at the Wimbledon men’s final... always worth a try, though.

“I like a challenge, sir, but for El Bulli, it is impossible,” says the concierge. “It opens for reservations on January 20, I think, and books up for the whole year on the same day.” Fair enough... she’s a concierge, not a magician. Let’s go to the opera instead.

“I want good seats at a good opera.” Her colleague comes over to help. In a whisker of a second, he’s on the phone and then he’s off again, with two stalls seats for tonight’s splendid Götterdämmerung.

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