BigBopper

My wife is currently on a business trip at the W Vieques. Early this morning she called to tell me she hurt her foot at the property and was at the hospital awaiting x rays. Since I'm not there there's not too much I can do to comfort her. I thought the least I can do is send flowers to her room. As it's an SPA property I thought a quick call to the concierge would take care of things. Boy was I wrong!

I called the platinum "concierge" number on the back of my card and expanded the situation and was instantly told "you can call the hotel for that." Well yes, I can in fact do that. There's many things I can do but I was already on the phone with a "concierge". He didn't even ask me my membership number!

Is it too much to ask to buy flowers from a member property or are my expectations too high? In more than 10 years as a plt I haven't had a concierge do anything more than reservations. I'm starting to think calling it a concierge line instead of reservations is blatant false advertising.

Mods, can you please change put to plt in the title. Auto correct strikes again

craz

I wouldnt have even thought to ask a concierge to do this, nor would I have caleld the hotel unless that was my only option.I would have googled to find the closest florist, called them or the likes of FTD or 1-800-Flowers only if I couldnt find something on my own

The least amount of hands involved means a nicer arrangement since the $$ will be going into the flowers and not a bunch of peoples pockets. All the concierge would have done is called the hotel and give them all your payment info and maybe even mess up the mesage or the type of flowers you wanted to send.

Definitely not something I would expect a concierge to handle, sorry. How about calling the concierge to do some grocery shopping and arrange for the car to be washed as well.

Flews

I do think the PC could have been more helpful.

On the other hand, I wouldn't have tasked this to a PC. I would have gone directly to a flower service or the hotel. Going direct helps avoid 'broken telephone', and reduces the number of hands on your credit card.

Cheers,

BenSenise

This is the type of thing you could request from an amex plat concierge or maybe the concierge at the hotel but it's not part of the SPG concierge offering. Your expectations are unrealistic.

BlissWorld

Nonsense.

SPG advertises the Platinum Concierge service as part of its benefits on spg.com:
Our signature Platinum Concierge service7 at 888-625-4991 – always one call away to help you arrange just about anything regarding your visit. It’s service tailored to your needs.

http://www.starwoodhotels.com/prefer...preferred.html

If SPG is going to advertise a service as "Concierge," they better provide the service as such. Otherwise, call it the Platinum line, just like the other hotel chains.

sbtinme

I disagree completely. Regardless of whether or not one would personally choose to ask the SPG Plat Concierge team to complete this task, the bottom line is that this sort of request falls PRECISELY into the category of tasks that SPG advertises (or, at least, used to) that eligible members of the program should utilize the concierge team for.

I'll quickly agree that when the SPG Plat Concierge program was rolled out many years back, it was done with a fair amount of fanfare and promises. These days, I don't see much mention of the Concierge component of the program, but we've not been told that it's been diminished in any way, so my expectation is that the offering remains unchanged. If so, it was always marketed as essentially a carbon copy of the AMEX CONCIERGE concept, whereby any lawful, reasonable request would be attended to.

Moreover, in practice, the PLAT CONCIERGE team quite often did nothing more than forward questions/requests over to the local hotel concierge team for processing. Insofar as that's always been the case, they should've been able to handle a simple floral order for a guestroom within their own network.

clublounger

The caller was NOT on a "visit". So, that promise remains valid, but doesn't necessarily apply to a non guest.

kevinsac

While the caller was not on a visit ... the caller's wife was. As such, I'd like to think the PC could have helped.

I agree with Bliss. (How are you, buddy? ) It would have been a nice gesture, whether or not it falls in the PC's typical duties. You have those who only do what they are required. And you have those who go a step beyond. The latter is what PC used to be. I'm not sure if the mission of PC has changed ... or if this was a one-off.

Often1

This is about falling for marketing sucker terms such as "concierge". Face it, you're talking to a reservations agent with a bit more experience and authority than the run-of-the-mill. That's great if you need a room with a specific view or a special blankie or whatever.

But, OP isn't a guest at the hotel, this is a financial transaction and the SPG agent isn't going to have a clue what's doable and what it costs at the specific location.

In this situation, I would either call my local FTD florist and make the arrangements or I would call the real concierge at the property directly and get it done after figuring out who to pay for the flowers, provide a hefty tip to make sure it happens and not have the whole thing appear on the wife's bill.

sbtinme

Say what you will, I can tell you that some of my best experiences with Starwood were the times I extensively used the in-house Plat Concierge team to hammer out substantial planning details for extended trips. In each case, I was assigned to very thorough concierge agents who took copious notes and followed through perfectly -- exceeding my expectations, which is saying a lot.

One example was a ten night trip to Venice and surrounding area. The concierge, unprompted, suggested a handful of unique tour experiences that are essentially non-published. At her suggestion, we got in on several once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that we surely would've known nothing about.

Admittedly, that's been some years back, so it's possible that the Concierge program at Starwood is no longer what it once was. I've not utilized them in recent years, but I maintain that the program was absolutely launched to be every bit as capable as any AMEX program that's ever existed. And, in my experience back then, it truly was.

clublounger

What is that?

kevinsac

Again, I'll state that the mission of PC might have changed.

But the PC has been very helpful in past years in designing and booking tours, private drivers, dinner reservations, theater tickets, flowers and champagne to be delivered, etc for me in Asia, Europe, South America, and Australia.

I countries where I know the language, maybe even know the city, have easy access to web sites I understand, etc, I might not use the PC service. But when I am at a loss, I have used PC, and they already have an "in" in those cities, or at least can work with the hotel's concierge.

Jenna L was my first PC, and I used her for years, before she was promoted in the Starwood system. Congrats for her; my loss!

sbtinme

Well, I'm not sure what it is or might be today. But, in the past, it was a dedicated core group of true travel professionals that were both seasoned and savvy. The core, core group of in-house concierges were not the same folks you'd get when calling the toll free number -- those folks could help with basic requests, but anything that really required insight and know-how either got pushed to the local property concierge team OR to one of these specialists in house. I can't comment about how the program is operating these days since I don't have recent experiences.

troyintn

I agree that it has gotten worse over the years, in the race to the bottom. It is still a lot better then Hilton. I called the Hilton Diamond Desk a couple of weeks ago and it was actually closed for the holidays.

Now as to the actual request, while not normal I would think this is something they could have handled, slower then doing it your self.

My wife has very little clue of where I am most of the time,(my schedule changes daily) on our fridge we keep all my elite #s and their phone numbers in case of an emergency. She has only had to use it once in 15 years, when the blackout closed the northeast, since she was not sure if I was coming home that night or not and could not reach my cell.

BigBopper

Well, since many of you feel like knocking what I did, I'll give you more information.

My wife called literally as I was boarding a flight. My goal was to have something small in her room to make her feel better when she got back from the hospital. Yes, I realize I could have done it myself. I could have researched florists. I could have called the hotel directly but to be honest, I have no idea if it would have been international roaming charges. I was simply looking for convenience and speed to get something done for my wife. I wanted to make one call and have it handled while I was in the air.

Now, if you want even more detail. True, I'm not staying at the property. However, my wife is there running an event at the property that's hitting somewhere around (my guess without asking her specifically) 250 room nights. She's one of 2 decision makers there. I didn't mention this to the PLT concierge but for those of you looking for a soap opera I figure I'd add it On top of all of that, she was injured ON THE PROPERTY so yeah, I had no problem taking up the offer of someone billing themselves as a concierge.

Long story short, I sent a private message to the SPG social media team on facebook. The professionally and quickly passed all the information on to the hotel. By the time I landed the flowers had been delivered and the concierge called me and left a message to make sure everything was satisfactory. I'm extremely pleased with the result despite the poor service from the concierge.

Finally, the question was essentially is this something we should expect from the concierge. It wasn't what would you do.