Michael Romei, general secretary of Union Internationale des Concierges d”Hôtels, was in Bengaluru to hone the skills of Les Clefs d’Or India — the association’s youngest member. He shares his golden rules with the association symbolised by the golden keys:
The foremost rule for concierges is responsiveness. For instance, a lot of queries come to you over email and should be responded to within a reasonable amount of time; I’d benchmark between six to eight hours as a reasonable interval. You might not have a solution to offer immediately but you can acknowledge receipt with a kind email. The response, rather than the content is important at this stage. It plays a tremendous role in displaying professionalism. Of course, as concierge you have to be ahead of the curve — in the hiring process itself, aspirants for the role must display a passion for wanting to know more. Hire curious people for the position — they have to want to discover places and keep up with their evolution to be an authority on a location. Nothing in this role can really be taught. An often forgotten fact is that the concierge is ideally supposed to be a local authority. He cannot play the role of a guidebook that stereotypes visitors to a city, because as your guest, the person approaching you would want something out-of-the-box, authentic and customised to his personality… such as a home-dining experience or entry to some place that you have through personal connections, but that they might not have received otherwise. As ambassador of the city, a concierge has the important role of drawing people back to a city and thereby to his hotel. He also plays an important role in selling the hotel’s spa, for instance, and its transportation. Moreover, as somebody who plays a part in the guest’s overall experience of the hotel and the city, he is in a position to build a bond with the guest and this can go a long way in having the guest choose the same hotel on another trip — he will return because somebody helped them to come upon a really great experience. I have to say that in India, I’ve been thoroughly impressed on both my visits — this is my second. On my first visit I stayed at The Leela Palace Udaipur. When I went for a swim, the young attendant cleaning the poolside had also cleaned my spectacles — when I asked him about it, he said that he noticed a lot of guests’ glasses getting foggy due to the humidity in that area and so he had developed a solution to have them cleaned by the time the guests emerged from their swim. On this trip, I’m impressed by the warm, personalised wake-up call from the Moevenpick staff — complete with the offer of a repeat call should I want to sleep for five minutes more! So as you see, being a concierge par excellence is about small moves that are slightly out of the way. We’ve all helped with flower arrangements and requests for specific music when people want to propose — some of us have even played witness for marriage proposals. I’ve even given guests a hand to find lost family members living in the city of the hotel they’ve checked into. None of these cost the hotel anything — its simply about not drawing boundaries on what the role should and should not bring to the table; about displaying a good degree of professionalism.
Michael Romei, general secretary of Union Internationale des Concierges d”Hôtels, shares his golden rules to hone the skills of Les Clefs d’Or India
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Complied by Raynah Coutinho
Michael Romei, general secretary of Union Internationale des Concierges d”Hôtels, was in Bengaluru to hone the skills of Les Clefs d’Or India — the association’s youngest member. He shares his golden rules with the association symbolised by the golden keys:
The foremost rule for concierges is responsiveness. For instance, a lot of queries come to you over email and should be responded to within a reasonable amount of time; I’d benchmark between six to eight hours as a reasonable interval. You might not have a solution to offer immediately but you can acknowledge receipt with a kind email. The response, rather than the content is important at this stage. It plays a tremendous role in displaying professionalism.
Of course, as concierge you have to be ahead of the curve — in the hiring process itself, aspirants for the role must display a passion for wanting to know more. Hire curious people for the position — they have to want to discover places and keep up with their evolution to be an authority on a location. Nothing in this role can really be taught.
An often forgotten fact is that the concierge is ideally supposed to be a local authority. He cannot play the role of a guidebook that stereotypes visitors to a city, because as your guest, the person approaching you would want something out-of-the-box, authentic and customised to his personality… such as a home-dining experience or entry to some place that you have through personal connections, but that they might not have received otherwise.
As ambassador of the city, a concierge has the important role of drawing people back to a city and thereby to his hotel. He also plays an important role in selling the hotel’s spa, for instance, and its transportation. Moreover, as somebody who plays a part in the guest’s overall experience of the hotel and the city, he is in a position to build a bond with the guest and this can go a long way in having the guest choose the same hotel on another trip — he will return because somebody helped them to come upon a really great experience.
I have to say that in India, I’ve been thoroughly impressed on both my visits — this is my second. On my first visit I stayed at The Leela Palace Udaipur. When I went for a swim, the young attendant cleaning the poolside had also cleaned my spectacles — when I asked him about it, he said that he noticed a lot of guests’ glasses getting foggy due to the humidity in that area and so he had developed a solution to have them cleaned by the time the guests emerged from their swim. On this trip, I’m impressed by the warm, personalised wake-up call from the Moevenpick staff — complete with the offer of a repeat call should I want to sleep for five minutes more!
So as you see, being a concierge par excellence is about small moves that are slightly out of the way. We’ve all helped with flower arrangements and requests for specific music when people want to propose — some of us have even played witness for marriage proposals. I’ve even given guests a hand to find lost family members living in the city of the hotel they’ve checked into. None of these cost the hotel anything — its simply about not drawing boundaries on what the role should and should not bring to the table; about displaying a good degree of professionalism.
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