Executive Travel : For Concierges, It’s Not All Wine and Rentals

Let’s say you’re on a business trip. The airline has lost your luggage with all your presentation materials inside and you have only a few hours to make new slides. What should you do?

Don’t panic. Ask the concierge for help. Many American business travelers are unaccustomed to using concierge services, but as more and more hotels hire them, guests are becoming aware that the concierge can do more than make restaurant reservations.

Concierge services, traditional in Europe, are still relatively new in the United States. Les Clef d’Or, the international professional organization of concierges, did not have a U.S. branch until 1977. By 1985, it had approximately 120 members, said Thomas Warrick, chief concierge at the Regent Beverly Wilshire and a member of the group. Today there are more than 200.

To be a member, a concierge must have worked under that title in a hotel for at least five years, three of them as lobby concierge. (Concierges also work on executive floors and in lounges.) Members must also pass a written exam covering everything from how to use the Official Airline Guide schedule to shipping regulations, and they must adhere to a code of ethics.

While many of a concierge’s services are routine, such as sending faxes or renting cars, it’s the occasional unusual demand that really gets a good concierge going.

A guest from the Middle East once asked Karron Cook, chief concierge at the Westwood Marquis and Gardens, to find him a set of silver-rimmed tires for a Mercedes-Benz, and also a satellite dish. She did.

Another time, she came to work to find a grandfather clock lying across her desk with a note asking her to please ship it to the guest’s home office. Last week, she was trying to locate a cat of a particular breed that a guest wanted to purchase to take home with her.

Lisa Craig, chief concierge at the Marriott Hotel in Century City, takes such requests in stride. “It’s all in the line of duty,” she said. One request does stick out in her mind, however. The hotel once hosted a group of ranchers from Colombia who didn’t speak much English. After some discussion, the staff at the concierge desk figured out they were looking for metal ear tags to be used to identify livestock in lieu of branding. With this information in hand, Craig called various stables throughout California until she had tracked down 2,000 of the tags and had them shipped to Colombia.

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Concierges are often called upon for romantic occasions, such as marriage proposals, Craig said. For example, the concierge on duty at the Westwood Marquis’ restaurant recently arranged for the pianist to start playing a couple’s favorite song just as a bouquet of roses with a ring tucked inside was delivered to their table.

And at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington in Pasadena, concierge Michael Collins was called one evening by a guest who wanted to use the hotel whirlpool with a female companion who didn’t have a swimsuit. Collins drove to a local store and bought her a “small bikini,” as requested.

It’s not all wine and roses, however. Cook also recently found help for some out-of-town guests who were in an automobile accident. And soon after the Northridge earthquake last January, Craig was on the phone helping guests locate people.

Indeed, no problem is too big or too small to merit the concierge’s attention. Mahmood Etemadi, concierge at the Biltmore Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, once had a guest from the Far East request a personal appointment with the mayor of Los Angeles.

“That was difficult to do,” he said. He did manage to arrange for the guest to meet with a mayor’s assistant, which satisfied the guest.

Another foreign party staying at the hotel desperately wanted to meet with an American farmer, so Etemadi arranged for them to meet one through a company in Napa Valley.

The art of being a concierge lies in being able to solve any problem a guest might encounter, said Warrick, the Beverly Wilshire concierge. His mentor, Bruno Brunelli, the retired former chief of concierge services at the Stanhope Hotel in New York City, was “extremely serious-minded about what he did and took great pride in it,” Warrick said. “He spoke six languages, knew everything and could do 20 things at one time.”

Warrick’s most famous concierge feat involved a wealthy guest from Texas who wanted to give his girlfriend the red dress Julia Roberts wore in the movie “Pretty Woman,” part of which was set at the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

The studio wouldn’t release the dress, but Warrick happened to know, through a friend, a seamstress who had worked on the movie. She made an exact duplicate for the guest.

How do concierges accomplish unusual tasks in short periods of time?

“Good concierges have to have a tremendous amount of patience,” said Cook of the Westwood Marquis. “They also have to be extraordinarily creative and very resourceful.”

A sense of humor and impeccable attention to detail also count. So does attitude. Etemadi at the Biltmore cringes at the very suggestion that guests bring him “problems.”

“If it is a problem to us, we, of course, never let the guest know it’s a problem,” he said.

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People sometimes think a concierge knows everything, Warrick said.

“Well, I don’t know everything by a long shot, but I do know how to find it out and put it together,” he said. “After a while, it becomes second nature where to start looking.”

Above all, a concierge must have integrity, Cook said. For example, most do not accept money from restaurants or other establishments in exchange for sending guests there. “That would be extraordinarily unethical, in my opinion,” she said. “Any concierge worth his or her salt wouldn’t do that.”

The big difference between a true concierge and a person at the front desk is the “realm of responsibility,” Craig said.

“Your job description is to do anything moral and legal to get the job done.”

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