Staff at hotel resorts must be amused by the ignorance of their guests: the elderly German who took a kayak to a neighbouring island and boasted about his tale of survival when he finally returned; the French couple who thought they’d spotted a crocodile among the mangroves (it turned out to be a komodo dragon); and a West London Girl who asked to be taken to the bird watching tower at 11am – when all the birds are hiding from the heat (I’ve written more about my personal holiday gaffes before).

I also discovered that some guests complain about being kept awake by animal noises while staying at The Menjangan, located in west Bali’s national park.

Hot Danish complained about the noise coming from above our suite caused by guests walking on the teak floors at Raffles Singapore. We soon discovered, through the hotel’s fascinating resident historian Leslie Danker, that those teak floors were part of the S$160 million restoration, taking the National Monument back to its 1915 colonial heyday.

‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do,’ Steve Jobs once said. Leslie Danker is certainly one of those people. He’s worked at Raffles Singapore for 42 years and has never tired of taking personal notes of the hotel, its guests and his work. His passion and dedication has made him a celebrity in his own right.

I’ve written about interests and passions before and thought that perhaps you need to have geeky obsessive qualities to achieve really great things. In which case it’s good to know that even if you don’t join the roll call of hotel celeb guests, your holiday foolery might join the stories that keep the dedicated staff amused long after you’ve departed the hotel.