How Hotels Ensure that they are the Host with the Most – the role of the Concierge.

You have seen them there so many times, off to the right of the reception desk, waving at bell boys, gesticulating at old men in business suits and bringing up web pages for lost looking Americans all at the same time. They wear a slightly different uniform than the rest of the staff and their badge and collar have some little keys sewn in to them. Those keys are there for a reason.

The Concierge.

Why would the hotel allow someone to just walk in and start telling everyone – staff, guests, cabbies & call girls, what to do? How do they fit in? Why do they exist?

For those of you who prefer to backpack or chill at home, you may have never even noticed this person working away behind their desk.

For those of you who are experienced international hotel users you may know many forms of answer to this question, based of your needs and your experience of travel. For the executive on office visits the concierge is often a trusted ally who knows better that you want you need and how to procure it as you stumble in after another day of lunching for your life. For the professional on a conference perhaps they are your local custom & culture speed coach. For a road warrior the concierge may be your local logistical genius – the Q to your James Bond. And for the style traveler the concierge is your connection and interpreter, plunging you into the real when everyone else wants you to tick off the sights.

For today I’m flipping the concierge question around and asking it from another point of view:

From the point of view of the hospitality industry as a whole, why do concierges exist?

From this point of view there is one main reason: To make the customer primary in an environment that will constantly drive for the customer to be an object.

And this is why I love this role – to me it is the glowing heart of hospitality in an industry that is, I believe the term goes, hyper mature. Hospitality is one of the oldest industries, and as such it has become highly competitive and increasingly technical and structured. In an industry like computer chips this is not such a big deal.

But problem with hyper maturity in hospitality is that although business systems, processes, innovations and offers can be continually improved, people are still people. They don’t always want better, more or best. Very often, as a weary traveler approaches the reception desk all they want is the smell of their partners clothes, the sound of their child’s laughter or the touch of their old pair of slippers. No amount of luxury can provide for these needs.

But the concierge can. And a concierge does. A concierge does something that very few other people in hospitality are asked to do any more. They listen. They seek to understand. Then they challenge and provoke so they can understand even better. And then they deliver. I have the memory; of fireflies dancing, just after dusk, as my wife and I dined on a menu of our on creation, just the two of us, in a gazebo strewn with frangipanis and lit by candles, by the banks of the Ayung river, to prove it.

Next week I’m going to share an experience of a concierge to back up my claims.