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Should Concierges Know Whether a Place is Open or Closed?

July 29, 2011 at 2:00 PM | by | Comments (4)

The other week while staying at the Trump Soho, we found ourselves in need of contact lens solution. Since (shockingly) there was no Duane Reade directly in sight, we hit up the Concierge desk to see if they or housekeeping had any travel-sized bottles on hand.

Just our luck, they had run out. So we asked for directions to the nearest drugstore. The concierge gave us the easy-to-follow direction to the Hudson Square pharmacy about four blocks away and off we went, dry eyes stinging and all.

But when we got there, the drugstore was closed. Turns out the store doesn't open until 10am on Sundays and we were there at 9am.

So we walked back to the hotel nearly flinging our stingy contacts on the pavement, wondering why the concierge would direct us to a place that was closed?

This has actually happened to us twice before when asking a hotel's concierge for a lunch spot suggestion. And the same thing happened--we walked to the place, only to find it was closed.

Now that question in our headline might seem a little obvious but we're trying to give concierges the benefit of the doubt here. After all, we can't expect them to know the operating hours of everything in the city. That's more of a computer's job and besides, we could probably double-check on Yelp.

But if a concierge is going to recommend a spot for us to visit, we'd like it if they could check on its opening hours. In the end our contact conundrum was solved when we realized we had a spare pair in an inside pocket of our suitcase. Phew.

Should concierges know the store hours of places they recommend or should you just look it up on your phone? Discuss in comments below.

[Photo: MsRebecca/HotelChatter Flickr Pool]

Hotels mentioned in this story

Comments (4)

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Fabulous is Fabulous...PERIOD

I think that's a great question. As a career Concierge who works exclusively in luxury boutique hotels, I would emphatically say 'YES!' The caveat to that is all Concierges (perhaps even at a Trump property I dare say) are not created equal. As a courtesy, a truly fabulous Concierge could have called for you (and had the car wisk you there and back). But because it was a Sunday particulary, good 'Concierge 101' training NECESSITATES a verification call!!
Even those of us who have locked the hours of different businesses in our mental rolodexs are still double checking these days. We are in a recovering economy and companies implement strategies like adjusting operating business hours and MOST times, without notice. Is it fair? No. Is it as natural as breathing to 'guest experience gurus'? Absolutely!
The Consummate Concierge on July 29, 2011 at 2:55 PM #Permalink

Let your fingers do the walking!

I agree that a fabulous concierge would phone first.  Knowing the schedule of an establishment does not allow for mishaps or things like doing inventory--that just happened to me at a location that is "always" open!
<a href="http://goo.gl/CUzAr">http://goo.gl/CUzAr</a>
Deb Lombard on August 1, 2011 at 1:35 PM #Permalink

I Wonder

Did you tip him enough to know if the store was open or not?
eagertraveler on August 1, 2011 at 5:00 PM #Permalink

Wait just a cotton pickin' minute...

Off the bat, my answer is YES!  Concierge should most certainly know, and if they don't, or if there is any question, immediately call and find out.  What I find troubling here is that this happened at the Trump Soho...  Under the Trump Attache program, they should have had it (as it truly should be considered a possible travel necessity left at home), and if they didn't they should have gone out to get it, or at least offered to do so.  Any way you cut it, there was a service deficiency here.  And not to beat a dead horse, but at brands like like Trump that push their attache service, or another example would be W with Whatever/Whenever, they've invested a lot of money to market these concepts and services, and if they aren't being pitched to guests, that is an unfortunate waste of money and possibly a sign of poor training provided by the property itself.
jclark702 on February 7, 2012 at 2:33 AM #Permalink

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