The hotel concierge has a mythical reputation. These people are apparently veritable wizards, dispensing reams of advice and having access to tickets to all the hottest sold out shows in town. Lose something? They’ll find it. Need something? They’ll get it.
I’ve stayed in a fair number of hotels in my life and I’ve never really used the service. Am I missing a trick here, or is it relatively normal not to use them?
What does the hotel concierge do?
The hotel concierge is a fountain of local knowledge. They can assist with restaurant reservations, spa bookings, recommending places to go, booking transport and a whole host of other things. To one extent or another, they are almost like a personal assistant.
A concierge deals with all kinds of requests, from the mundane to the challenging, which must keep things interesting. I’m sure organising the umpteenth taxi gets old though!
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- Your in luck if your concierge wears this pin.
There are also elite concierges, who are members of Les Clefs d’Or, who wear a pin with two crossed golden keys. There are only about 4,000 or so of these people around the world, and there are stringent requirements to gain membership.
Spotting this being worn means the person is very well connected and can organise virtually anything that is legal and within reason. I’ve seen these in person, but I couldn’t think of anything I needed that would be outrageously unusual to see if they could deliver!
Overall Thoughts
A hotel concierge is a highly trained professional, who is there to ensure guests have the best experience possible. Since they are found in decent hotels throughout the world, they certainly must be useful to a lot of people.
However, I have never really had a need for the service. Perhaps that comes from planning ahead and having an idea of what I want to do. Perhaps I should throw caution to the wind sometime and ask the concierge for direction on what to do in a new city. Could be interesting!
Have you used or do you regularly use the concierge? If so, what kinds of things have you had them do for you? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Ashley Ross on Unsplash.
Les Clefs d’Or image via Crowne Plaza Auckland.
I use it a lot when traveling to foreign countries, such as Japan, France, and Italy. I never used it in the US, though.
Okay cool, that makes sense! Thanks for the comment.
In a convoluted way I have. When I was 6 years old in 1971 my Mom took me to Spain and Portugal on a TWA Getaway Vacation she won in a sales contest when she was working for Ozark Airlines. We didn’t have much time to plan so off we went with hotel reservations and not much else. Back then the mass tourism of today had yet to take materialize and Spain and Portugal were still dictatorships. So in Madrid, our first stop, Mom was trying to hail a taxi outside of the hotel and getting nowhere so she went… Read more »
I love this story! Seems like kids can be useful after all 😉 That’s really great all round… hahaha!
Yes, I’ve used a Concierge on a number of occasions … specifically getting me best seats at theatre and dinner reservations at a hot restaurant. Also have used their advice on quality shops for items I wanted to buy. Very very helpful. And of course, they in turn were shown monetary appreciation in return. Next visit, they somehow remembered me
Great to hear this and some good advice there. I will have to make sure I use the service in future! Thanks very much.
All the time in major cities. Great for getting hard to find dinner reservations or theater tickets. Also really helpful in getting shopping suggestions for off the beaten path shops. And particularly helpful finding medical care if you’re in a foreign country.
Excellent tips there for anyone wanting to use the service. You make a lot of sense on the medical care – they certainly would be the best people to ask over using the Internet. Thanks for that!
[…] you’ve stayed at a higher-tier hotel, you’ve undoubtedly seen the Concierge Desk. How good are these concierges? Depending on the hotel, the services may vary from finding overpriced theater tickets to walking […]
Great subject. In my case there’s a bit of a confluence of ignorance about what I should be asking about (what they can do), situations like Alex’s where I’m just handed a map and given directions to some place that serves bland tourist food, and not knowing how much to tip under certain circumstances. In tandem these tend to keep me away from the concierge desk. It doesn’t help that in many cases the concierge desk doubles as the tour desk.
Good point you make there, when it comes to things like tipping and what you can and can’t ask. I think we need a guidebook for the concierge 🙂
I was judging / chaperoning a high school debate trip and drove from Erie to Cambridge MA for the Harvard debate tournament. School van was handicapped accessible so wouldn’t fit anywhere in the hotel garage. The concierge was able to secure on-street parking right near the hotel by I think pulling some strings. That really saved the trip. Don’t remember the name of the hotel as it was over 10 years ago. But it was certainly appreciated and not what I normally think of using a concierge for.
That is excellent, and such a good example of what they can do to really help people out. I’m glad that worked out so well for you and really, I think that’s the whole purpose of the service. To be able to deliver solutions that make a trip perfect. Thanks so much for the comment – love hearing first hand experiences, so I appreciate that!
I have successfully used concierge service overseas in a couple of Asian countries. But in the U.S., the times I have tried have either resulted in them handing me a couple of pamphlets and a map (useless), or them steering me to something or another where they are getting a kick-back. So like most purported services in the U.S., if its not expensive its crap.
Well, I guess it’s different in each country and depending on which hotel you’re at. I can understand the aspect where they provide maps and so on, it’s still a service they are providing. Obviously that’s more a starter level than an elite level concierge, but it is what it is! Thanks for sharing your experience – it’s certainly interesting to hear that!