A few years back, I had the opportunity to do some consulting work with Ritz Carlton (right before they were bought by Marriott). Indivudual hotels have the ability to track guest preferences. For instance, if you call the front desk to get extra pillows sent to your room, the request is put in the computer and they will make sure you have extra pillows every time you check in to that hotel (in theory, not sure how well it works). Every employee is supposed to carry a note pad to observe/record guest preferences. They can then have those preferences placed in your record so that they will be acknowledged whenever you check in to the hotel. Unfortunately, I think the system is for individual hotels only so your record for the St. Thomas Ritz will not be the same as the Atlanta Ritz. Of course, they may have upgraded their system by now.