Planning, arranging, and organizing is a tiresome and time-consuming activity. You must have come across a situation many times, where you’d have thought that someone else would have done everything for you. You just want to relax and enjoy your holiday.
Companies and private individuals specialized in personal assistance services; they would help you as long as it stays within the legal boundaries. They are concierge service providers; here it follows;
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What is Concierge?
The duties and meaning of the word concierge have changed over some time in the past. However, a concierge is a person or a firm specializes in providing personal assistance like transportation, booking flights, household management, vacation planning, an appointment with doctors and trainers, and lifestyle management to VIP clients like CEO, high-level managers, celebrities, and rich people.
By personal assistance, I mean that the concierge personals outsource the required service for their clients. The concierge aims to save time, effort, and energy of the client. In return, they charge different prices from their clients, and the price varies from client to client and the amount of service they provide.
Duties of a Concierge
The duties and responsibilities of concierge vary from situation to situation. Some of the main duties of the concierge are as follows;
- Making reservations at the hotels and restaurants, and buying tickets for their clients.
- Collect information about the night club, person, hotel, or a place and providing it to the client.
- Creating travel arrangements, and making appointments with the doctor, trainer, or other specialists.
- Mail, luggage, and delivery management for their clients,
- Working in the office temporarily,
- Performing difficult and unusual tasks of their clients like hot-air-balloon rides
- Finding the lost items of the client,
How a Concierge Works
Some people think that only the wealthy and rich people can afford concierge, it’s nothing but far from the truth. Concierge falls under the category of the luxury industry. However, technology has changed the jobs, roles, timing, and responsibilities of various professions.
Some professionals are so much in their work. When they get some time off from their busy laborious routine, they don’t want to waste it planning and waiting in the lobby. They want to enjoy the little time from their work, instead of planning for it. The business model of concierge targets the needs and requirements of such people.
In the past, the role of concierge was limited to the reservation of hotels and restaurants. But now the scope of the concierge service industry is comprised of many activities like; shopping assistance, holidays and vacation planning, hotel selection, making appointments with different professionals, etc.
Since different concierges are offering different services to their clients. Therefore, the business model of every concierge service would be different. For instance, some concierge deals with customer issues, some deal with employer-employee relationships, some handle travel, and vacation arrangement, and some provide you personal assistance regarding lifestyle management.
Examples of Concierge Service
Different types of concierge services with examples are as follows;
Personal Concierge
The role of personal concierge comprises various tasks like paying household bills, housekeeping, organizing events, making reservations at the hotels and restaurants, moving stuff through relocation, etc.
As long as the work you do is legal, then it would fall under the category of a personal concierge. You can hire personal concierge either on a monthly salary basis or on per tasks and project basis. The difference between personal concierge and other concierges is that personal concierge assists his clients at home or anywhere, wherever the client needs.
Hotel Concierge
Hotel concierge, as the name implies it assists the wealthy clients at the hotel. It is also one of the earliest and oldest forms of the concierge. The role and duties of a hotel concierge are to make reservations, order transportation, buying the ticket, keep you safe, celebrate with you, resolve your travel issues, get your room in order, and help you with your special needs.
Travel Concierge
Travel concierge is the person that provides personal travel assistance to its clients. This type of concierge service also falls in the category of a personal concierge, because it helps you to make you travelling comfortable and adventurous. It also does travelling chores for you especially when you’re too busy to do it by yourself.
When tourists are visiting some foreign places, then they need an instant guide to move around the place and intermingle with the locals. That’s where the role of travel concierge comes in because he’s the local person who is very well familiar with the local norms and willing to assist 24/7 through your tour.
Lifestyle Concierge
Lifestyle concierge provides you assistance in all areas of lifestyle and creates balance in your personal and professional life. So that you would be able to focus on the important things, give proper time to your family, and perform better at work.
Celebrities, CEOs, and highly busy people usually hire lifestyle concierge to create balance in their lives. The role of lifestyle concierge is to do chores on your behalf and outsource your personal and professional tasks.
Concierge Medicine
Concierge medicine is to develop the relationship between the doctor and the patient where the patient pays charges. In concierge medicine, the doctor provides additional and personal care to their patients. Concierge medicine also goes by many names like member medicine, retainer medicine, direct care, and cash-only practice.
Corporate Concierge
Corporate concierge is the person that provides business assistance to its clients. Other roles and duties of a corporate concierge are to provide personal assistance, social activities, dinner reservation, buying tickets, and making deals with clients.
It’s also the job of the corporate concierge is to arrange and attend conferences, meetings, repair the company’s computer or outsource it, hire employees temporarily, and arrange translators for the company. Some of the corporate concierges are highly qualified and have college degrees, but it’s not the requirement for it. One should have excellent communication skills to be a corporate concierge.
Residential Concierge
Residential concierge is the person who works at a home desk or near the building. The pay and salaries of residential concierge vary from task to task and client to client. The roles and duties of residential concierge include; attending and greeting guests, providing direction if needed in case of some event, household chores and services, and providing assistance at home.
Digital Concierge
Digital concierge is the person that performs multiple activities and upgrades your hotel from analog to digital. The website provides us information, but mobile applications are the new form of a digital concierge. It provides convenience to customers and clients, where they can check and monitor everything with limited steps.
The digital concierge could be in the form of providing information like direction, various locations of the offices, maps, flights and trains arrivals and departures, and your favorite clubs and restaurants.
The Future of Concierge Service Business
Internet, technology, and mobile applications have reshaped the whole functionality of the concierge service business. Nowadays, a US person hires his concierge from India and he would make a hotel reservation, book flights, and arrange his life schedule remotely.
Technology has made it a virtual concierge cheaper. Now middle-income personals can also afford to have personal concierges. Google Assistant, Haptik, Assist, Alexa are some of the mobile applications that help you manage your text messages, plan your schedule, building conversation, and help you shopping.
It is safe to say that technology has increased the demand and supply of concierge service business, and its future is bright.
