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Compromised Concierges
The Travel Critic · November 2, 1999

Careful who you consult for dining and entertainment recommendations on your next trip. You just might get a paid advertisement in response.

Many concierges who sit attentively at their desks in hotel lobbies by day are wined and dined nightly by restaurants eager for their approval. Others are offered - and accept - cash kickbacks in exchange for sending hotel guests their way. The alternative, travel guide books, are usually no more credible.

Talk to Peter Smiley, the concierge at Portland, Ore.'s upscale Heathman hotel, for a good idea of the temptations of a top-flight tipster. "I get invited to a restaurant four or five nights a week. I've run up $400 to $500 tabs, but the bill never comes," he says. "I still consider myself a critic, and if the service isn't good, I won't recommend the restaurant."

Not every hotel concierge feels that way. "Some restaurants will try to give you money for recommendations, and some concierges take the cash," says James Jolis, a concierge at The Michelangelo hotel in New York. "But the minute you do, you've been sold. It's a position you don't want to be in."

The practice is relatively rare in the United States, he adds, but widespread in Europe. "It isn't unusual for a concierge in a place like Rome to get paid a commission in exchange for sending a hotel guest to a department store," he says.

Stateside, according to Abbie Newman, the New York Hotel InterContinental's chief concierge and a member of the board of the New York City Association of Hotel Concierges, "It's usually OK to take a free meal. It's not OK to be on the restaurant's payroll."

In a perfect world, here's how it's really supposed to work, courtesy of Donna Lewis, the proprietor of the Victorian Garden Inn in Sonoma, Calif. Her recommendations come from visiting the restaurants herself and getting to know the chefs personally. "Since we have been here for over 16 years, we have developed a system for referring our guests which is quite personalized, contrary to the services in many large, impersonal hotels, who many times can only refer, but not follow up on a visit," she says.

Lewis says guests too frequently read guidebooks written by "who-knows-who, who has never been in some of the restaurants but read the material sent to them by the owners or perhaps has been given complimentary meals, and then recommend these places."

She makes a valid point. Travel guide books are, by and large, written by journalists who are incessantly on the take. One publishing insider I spoke with described the published information as "tainted." At the rate they consume freebies and dish out their quid-pro-quo narrative, they almost make other travel writers look legitimate.

Mike Urban, the associate publisher at The Globe Pequot Press, the Old Saybrook, Conn., publisher of specialty travel guides, acknowledges that few in his industry are journalistically pure.

"Most travel publishers can't afford to pay the tens of thousands of dollars that they would need to cover all of their expenses," he says. "In many cases, the writers would like to write an honest and objective review, but they can't because they've accepted free rooms or meals."

At Concierge.com, the new online home of Conde Nast Traveler, (its motto: "Truth in Travel") much of the content comes from Fodor's - a guide book whose motto definitely isn't Truth in Travel (rather, it's the fluffier "Simply Perfect Trips Everytime".)

Asked whether its reporters are on the take from suppliers, Fodors spokeswoman Julie Harkavy puts it this way: "We expect [our writers] to do sufficient research from as many sources as possible to make well-balanced, judicious, and unbiased recommendations of the best places to stay and eat in all price categories."

There's no excuse for unethical behavior, says Karim El-Raheb, the chef concierge at the St. Regis hotel in Houston. And offering recommendations in exchange for perks, even when it's a good spot, is a firing offense to him.

"Taking free meals is not appropriate," he says. "When the concierges at our hotel want to spot a place, we go incognito, in our street clothes. That's how you find a good restaurant. If the staff recognizes you, you'll have a great experience. But that's not the point. What's the average Joe going to experience?"

Unless the average Joe knows that the advice he's getting should be taken with a grain of salt, and verified against other people's experiences, he'll be disappointed. If not deceived.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.