Concierges work miracles behind the hotel desk

Concierges work miracles behind the hotel desk
By Susan Bowles, special for USA TODAY - an excerpt


Abby Hart has fielded a lot of requests during her 16 years as head concierge at Four Seasons Hotel Chicago. But one in particular caused her to take pause: Could she find a dog to keep a guest company? The businesswoman asking missed her pooch back home.

"A canine companion," says Hart, 56. "That was a tough one."
But not impossible. Turning to the network of friends and acquaintances she has built during her 25-plus years in the concierge business, Hart quickly found someone who was going on vacation and planning to board his Lhasa apso. Would he consider "lending" his dog to the lonely traveler? The man said yes. The hotel guest got her companion. And the lucky Lhasa slept in a hotel instead of a kennel and dined from the Four Seasons' canine canapé menu.

DO'S AND DONT'S
DO call before you arrive, particularly if you want reservations to the hot new restaurant or tickets for the latest Matthew Broderick/Nathan Lane production.

DO note who serves you. Find out whom you're dealing with when you call in advance. "You've made a relationship there," says Thomas Wolfe, chef concierge at The Fairmont San Francisco.

DO introduce yourself to the concierge when you check into the hotel. Give him or her a business card if you have one and share your room number, says Sara- ann Kasner, founder and president of the National Concierge Association.

DO feel free to ask. "I can be your in-house travel agent or a meeting planner," says Shujaat Khan at The Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. "The concierge is your best friend. We take the stress out."

DO say thank you. While concierges don't work for tips, they certainly appreciate them. They also love the creative thank-yous that guests provide. Abby Hart, head concierge at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, loves the monogrammed cashmere sweater a guest gave her dog.

DON'T ask for something illegal. You won't get it. You shouldn't even ask for something unkind, says Wolfe.

DON'T throw tantrums. Although unusual, "There are times when a concierge cannot do some things," Kasner says. "So a little patience would be appreciated."
Hotel concierges field hundreds of requests each day, shunning yellow Post-its in favor of recording guests' desires in meticulously kept notebooks. They deal with the mundane (restaurant reservations, theater tickets, questions about local transportation and where to check e-mail), to the sublime (help me plan a marriage proposal my intended will never forget). They rub elbows with Hollywood celebrities and other A-listers.

But all that expertise, attention and loving care isn't just for VIPs. Hotel concierges serve all guests, regardless of their bank account balance or "it" factor.
"I personally get more pleasure helping a family," says Shujaat Khan, chef concierge at The Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C., and president of Les Clefs d'Or USA, an association of hotel concierges and part of the Union Internationale des Concierge d'Hotels.

In the beginning
Concierges got their start in Europe in the early 1900s. But these masters-of-answers who could meet any need remained relatively unknown in this country until the mid-1970s.
That's when Thomas Wolfe, a young radio and TV graduate, decided life behind a microphone was too isolating. He traveled to Europe and soon was employed at the front desks of hotels in London and Paris, where he was hooked.
"I said, 'This is what I want to do,' " he recalls. "How do you provide miracles every day?"

Wolfe began working with the concierges and after returning to the USA in 1974, joined The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco as what he and the hotel say was the first American concierge. Four years later, he founded Les Clefs d'Or USA, which now has more than 450 members.

Standing behind his desk three decades later, Wolfe, 61, never knows what a day will bring. He may be asked to repair a shoe or be consulted about an appropriate gift for a Japanese businessman.

How he accomplishes these tasks, he says, often depends less on formal training than on the web of contacts he has spun over the years. While many concierges have taken courses or earned degrees in hotel management, many more have not. And, like Wolfe, all concierges know their success depends on who they know. Their contacts include the usual suspects: restaurant managers and maitre d's, airline agents and boutique owners.

But the real key to success, they say, is the network of specialists they cultivate.

The Four Seasons' Hart, for instance, knows which anti-que dealers sell furniture from certain periods. Wolfe knows a man who's a wizard with luggage repair and makes after-hours calls. "These are people who maybe aren't even in the Yellow Pages," he says.

They're also people concierges guard scrupulously. Hart keeps her "precious contacts" in a little red book under lock and key. Listings include cellphone and personal numbers, information "they would never give to the public," she says. "But they give them to us because they so understand the value for them."

A lot of business
What is that value? Consider restaurants. Every day, concierges know that someone will ask them to make a restaurant reservation, adding up to as many as 400 to 500 referrals a month, Khan says. That's a lot of business, and it pays off. Restaurants often call a favorite concierge when they have cancellations. And they'll usually find a way to seat a guest if that concierge calls. "They would not say no to me," Kahn says.
But it's the unexpected — even the inspiring — requests that concierges say they really live for.

Frederick Bigler, the 43-year-old chef concierge of the Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park, and a 20-year industry veteran, recalls the CEO who called for advice on what to get his 11-year-old for the holidays. The executive was stumped, Bigler says, "because the son had everything."
Bigler arranged a shopping trip for the boy to toy emporium FAO Schwarz. There, he picked out a variety of items, then sent them to a local children's hospital.
"Suddenly, shopping wasn't boring," Bigler says. "It was for someone else."

As for Kahn, he remembers the traveling businesswoman who'd had a baby and needed somewhere to express her breast milk that was close to the hotel's meeting rooms. Kahn arranged a private room off the lobby each day so she could express quickly and get back to business. He then took the expressed milk, labeled it, froze it and shipped it to her home. "The comfort she placed in us," he says. "It was just a pleasure all the way around."

Those guests asked for assistance. What about the people who may be too shy or embarrassed to ask for help? Lucky for them, concierges are keen observers.

Sometimes the problem is obvious. Chef concierge Inger Boudouris, 70, was working her desk at the Hotel St. Francis in Santa Fe, when she noticed a hotel guest in tuxedo shirt, jacket, shoes, socks ... and boxer shorts.
Boudouris learned that the man was 30 minutes late for his own wedding. His brother, who had gone to pick up his tuxedo pants in Albuquerque, hadn't yet returned. Boudouris told the hapless groom to put on some jeans and swap his dress shoes for cowboy boots. He arrived at the nearby chapel and was married "Santa Fe style."

Specialist concierges
Some hotels and resorts now even offer concierges who specialize in certain areas, such as golf. Chicago's Four Seasons added a concierge for the summer-tourist season whose sole job was to serve the needs of "tweeners" — 11- to 16-year-olds "who really slip through the cracks," Hart says.

But the traditional hotel concierge remains a generalist, able to answer any question or meet any need, big or small. And all requests are fulfilled in unflappable style, even when the pressure is on.

"A guest will never, ever understand what goes on behind their request," says Bigler, who trained to be an actor before stage fright caused him to rethink his career. "All they get is it's served on a silver platter," he says.
So what does a concierge's services cost?
For the guest, nothing. That's because concierges are salaried employees of the hotels they work for and don't depend on tips for their livelihood. While none likes to talk about money, salaries can range from $20,000 to $50,000, according to Les Clefs d'Or.

Sara-ann Kasner, the Minneapolis-based founder and president of the National Concierge Association, says concierges "are there to give you good service whether you tip or not." Hours of work vary, too, largely because concierges stay until their jobs are done. And serving a guest may not end with the traditional workday.
All of which makes personal time more precious. Wolfe spends his days off tinkering with vintage cars and motorcycles. Bigler writes screenplays and sitcoms. (Not about anyone in particular, he says. "Guests don't have to worry.") Hart is an avid rollerblader and, because she lives just a block from the hotel, often goes careening by her guests.

But even on their days off, these pros are always on the job. "Every time we step out of our apartment door, we're on," says Bigler.
"Your day never really ends," Wolfe says. "You need to be always having business cards with you."
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Confessions of a concierge - December 17 2002
Harry Nicolaides

Everyone has a story to tell, but 35-year-old Harry Nicolaides has more than his fair share. As the chief concierge for the past seven years at Melbourne's Rydges Hotel, the West Brunswick-raised boy has catered to every whim - be it risque or routine - of royalty, politicians, sports stars and business people.

Former Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja believes he knows what women want (apparently, more than one mini Mars bar). Jeff Fenech has jokingly threatened to beat him to a pulp if he reveals the world-champion boxer's secrets. They are not the only celebrities with cause for concern.

Nicolaides has just published Concierge Confidential (Pennon Publishing, $22.95), an anthology of hotel tales about the bizarre goings-on behind "the revolving door of destiny".

Hotel guests from around the world send him Christmas cards - "Seventy-six is my record," Nicolaides boasts - but this year might be a different story. Once some of his guests have read the book, he might be receiving another kind of mail.

As former prime minister Gough Whitlam said in a telegram that was read out at the book's launch this month in Melbourne: "God save the Queen, because nothing will save Harry."

Not that any of the guests are identified, which means that the senior federal Liberal politician with a habit of nude sleepwalking can sleepwalk easy. And the Liberal backbencher with a penchant for getting flogged need not whip himself into a lather.

As former federal opposition leader Kim Beazley puts it, Concierge Confidential "is an interesting collection of hotel stories in which the names are changed to protect the guilty".

The setting for the book's 15 short stories is not the four-star, 22-storey Rydges Hotel on Exhibition Street. Nicolaides' employer made sure of that. Instead, the setting is the fictional Majestic Hotel, and the concierge is called "Tyrone".

Nicolaides, however, has drawn on his on-the-job experiences. "I couldn't have invented these stories," he says. "I didn't know where Liechtenstein was and I didn't know what green-lip abalone was. And I had no idea that sadomasochistic rituals involved gimp masks and whips. I had no idea about lots of things until I saw them."

Although he studied to be a teacher, Nicolaides says he got into the hospitality business to get "lots of raw life experience, which I hope has given me something to expand upon.

"I've always enjoyed writing and the experience of being a hotel concierge has been a particularly fertile one for that," he says. "I get to see a very human side of celebrities. I see their foibles, their vanity and their humility."

Should he leaf through the book, there is a criminal investigation branch detective who will recognise the story of how Nicolaides took happy snaps of a champagne-fuelled detective and "a platinum-blonde femme fatale" canoodling in a spa.

"I'm smashing the most sacred taboo in the hotel industry - discretion," Nicolaides admits. "But there's nothing in the book that's malicious or injurious. Sure, there are a few things that are scurrilous and embarrassing."

There are many hotel guests who rave about Nicolaides' commitment to the job. The ventriloquist David Strassman considers him the finest concierge in the world.

For Nicolaides, whose regulation Saville Row, navy, pin-stripe suit and slicked-back hair make him appear more gangster-in-training than hotel concierge, it's all part of the service.

"Where the request is unusual, people will usually seek out the services of a good concierge," he says. "People know that my stock-in-trade is nepotism and calling in favours."

Some of those "favours" have involved procuring an ostrich feather (Nicolaides got a zoo keeper to pluck one from a sleeping bird) and organising within hours $3000 worth of rare, green-lip abalone for a millionaire's party aboard a yacht.

His willingness to go beyond the call of duty has won him tourism awards for his individual service standards, not to mention a $300,000-a-year job offer to work for a Malaysian billionaire. But Nicolaides declined.

"That job would probably have entailed running out to buy him socks, which is not very edifying for a developing writer," he says.

He's not afraid to bend the rules, which sometimes raises the ire of his superiors. But as Nicolaides sees it, he's on a mission to raise service standards. And that might entail?

"Comforting the bereaved or providing the sort of adult interaction, such as an escort service, that someone new to a city might feel uncomfortable organising by themselves," Nicolaides says.

"I have to be very broad-minded. But I will only do what's legal and moral. The truth is, most of the (requests) inhabit that no-man's land between what's moral and immoral and what's legal and illegal.

"This is not a job I do for the money. It's a job I do to look after people. The guests who read my book will certainly know who they are."

Concierge Confidential is available from Mary Martin and Collins bookstores and Myer Melbourne.