Grantastic Designs’ Blog

At the SMX Local Mobile Keynote on October 1, Michael Jones, Chief Technologist for Google Maps, Earth, and Local Search, talked about the comparisons and contrasts between online local search and the concierge business.

Concierges have been a professional society since 1929 in Europe, and since the late 1970s in the U.S.

“There are some parallels between what a concierge might do and what computers could do.” Michael said, describing the qualities of a good concierge and how local search attempts to parallel that criteria (shown in the slide below in parenthesis).

Advantages of a professional concierge over Google’s Local search

While more seasoned travelers and users overall are flocking to local search for tips, Michael admits that Google is not nearly as good as the service a hotel’s professional concierge could provide.

“As an industry, both from the provider side, from the user-satisfaction side, and from the optimization side, we’re weak in a lot of these areas.” said Michael. By comparison to professional concierges, Michael characterizes the current state of local search along personalization and customization as “pretty poor.”

Human concierges get a feel for what you mean, over what a computer interface can only do minimally with spelling.

Some of those advantage of good concierges I would add of my own:

• They have good connections. A good concierge can make quality reservations on short notice.
• They have special tips and deals with other businesses – that can include unique restaurants, shops, attractions and events.
• They can create memorable total-trip experiences (not just individual components thrown together) that can instill brand loyalty, making guests want to return to the hotel or recommend it to others.Good concierges have connections
• They can fill areas that have a lack of user-generated content online.
• They can provide honest expertise over the noise of the online crowd. There have been many cases online of competitors giving false “bad reviews” to each other. (This is especially prevalent among the top Chicago restaurants, so I’ve found.) A concierge can provide much better reliability when the noise of user-generated content reviews gets to be too much, especially when its overidden with bad spam reviews.

This would make the arguement that local search isn’t always a proper substitute over a concieges’ own expertise and long-term industry experience, and “human empathy.” (Human empathy would be extremely difficult for a computer even with artificial intelligence to properly duplicate.) Concierges are trained at hospitality management schools, and know how to handle guests needs on an emotional level. The concierge can get something contextual and semantical with the request – and that goes well beyond what the digital keyboard can provide.

“As an industry, both from the provider side, from the user-satisfaction side, and from the optimization side, we’re weak in a lot of these areas.” concedes Michael.

The state of the concierge industry

Concidentally, the day after Michael’s keynote presentation, USA Today ran a front-page story on the concierge industry. Interviews with hospitality service experts suggested that the need for concierges is decreasing with the growth of local search.

Except at upscale hotels, the concierge “is going the way of the elevator operator,” says Chekitan Dev, a Cornell University hotel school professor. “Owners and operators of midmarket and down-market hotels can no longer justify offering the service of a concierge,” he says, because plenty of information is available on the Internet, and “good concierges are hard to find, hard to keep and expensive.”

David Cranage, a professor at Penn State’s hospitality management school, suggests that hotels’ new moves to deliver information without a concierge staff may be akin to banks, a quarter-century ago, adding ATMs and, in some cases, discouraging the use of tellers by charging fees.

However, the story’s author said that “Whether sophisticated information technology could ultimately lead to the demise of the traditional concierge position is a matter of some disagreement in the hospitality industry. Neither the government nor the industry tracks employment numbers.”

What does seem clear is that even if concierges are being better trained to utilize online local search, a quality concierge, or just any concierge, appears to be reserved more for your high-end brand of hotels (in the 4-star and 5-star range). Other hotels rely on guest services, which often has no ample experience with local search. (When I contacted my local Holiday Inn on a Sunday, they mentioned that their sales department handles guest’s local travel tips, which was only available on weekdays!)

My recommendation for all hotels: mandatory local search training

In this where more travelers are using local search as part of their trip plans, every hotel, no matter what the size or rate, should make local search accessible to their guests – either with a concierge or staff member who has at least basic training in local search, along with easy access for guest themselves to online local search. This can be done by the following means:

• Including online local search in hospitality training.
• Provide assistance for travelers on how to enter local information into their cell phones via SMS, including placing the hotel address.
• Include a virtual concierge system – online services that give guests 24-hour access to information normally provided by a concierge. This can appear right when people access the wifi of the hotel, and right on the desktop computers available to guests.
• Feature staff picks based on employees’ knowledge of the area. As the USA Today article reports, this is already being done by 20% of the Radisson hotels in their American chain.
• Poll guests on their experiences, and have their own “hyper local” reviews by their guests, right on their hotel website. (These reviews could also be accessible  when people at the hotel login everytime to wifi.)

There have been times when I’ve actually found myself assisting concierges on how to find certain locations, and the information they have to offer.

While I don’t forsee the demise of concierges anytime soon, whether a hotel or building has a concierge or guest services staff of any kind, they all need be better trained on local search.  Local search may not necessarily “kill” the concierge business, but the concierge business needs to have better familiarity with online local search if they are to maintain their own relevance.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Google local, Google maps, mobile search, Google, local search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.