Coordinating a chartered plane to the Indianapolis 500, arranging backstage passes for a Kid Rock Show and making room for a sex swing are all part of a day’s work for hotel concierges on Chicago’s Near North Side.

Rich with hot spot restaurants like Sunda, RL and Gibsons Bar and Steakhouse as well as fancy boutiques like Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Gucci on Michigan Avenue, so many visitors are drawn to the area that concierges stay especially busy.

Ben Nelson, a concierge at the Dana Hotel and Spa at 660 N. State St., has been in the hotel industry for 15 years, including five years as a concierge at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.

After spending several years as a concierge, “My concept of ‘outrageous’ is completely off,” Nelson said. “Backstage to Kid Rock at the United Center? Sure. Need an Escalade limo with that? A $200 chess set delivered to the hotel in 45 minutes? Certainly. Alabaster or ivory?”

Now it’s the simple questions that bug Nelson.

“All it takes is one guest saying, ‘Where should I eat? I don’t care about the cuisine as long as it’s good,’” he said. “There are 100 restaurants I want to blurt out at once, and I find myself thinking, ‘This is outrageous.’”

Once, Nelson was taking care of a celebrity guest and the guest’s crew.

“They decided that (in the middle of their trip) they wanted to change the location of their party to Miami for two days,” Nelson said, “so they came to me and requested a jet charter to Miami for two nights out of their trip, hotel and nightclub accommodations on South Beach and a return back to Chicago. I only had one question for them: ‘Any way you can talk to my boss and squeeze me in?’”

Christopher Rodriguez, a concierge at Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago at 401 N. Wabash Ave., said he’s had quite a few interesting and unusual requests from guests in his six years as a concierge.

“One of the most detailed requests that we’ve had was when we had a group that wanted to go and see the Indy 500, and they had a very short window of opportunity” because of their flight times, Rodriguez said. “So, we arranged for a private jet to bring them into Indianapolis, and once they got to Indianapolis, they were met by a motorcade that brought them to the speedway, and they stayed at the race for about an hour and a half,” and then the motorcade escorted them back to the jet and then flew back to O’Hare, where they were able to meet their flight.

“It was definitely a pricy endeavor,” Rodriguez said, but declined to say how much the trip cost. “I’ll put it this way — it was enough to get two police forces from two different cities in two different states involved, so it was a bit pricy, I would say.”

Concierges at the Trump hotel also have coordinated bringing harpists, violinists, trapeze artists, and photographers to follow people around the city, Rodriguez said.

“We’ve rented rabbits as mascots for a guest, a company” that featured a rabbit as an icon, Rodriguez said.

Also, he said, “We have had a lot of more on the risqué end of things. For instance, we’ve had, like, portable sex swings built into rooms, so we’d actually move all of the furniture from a guest room and build this swing that they had purchase.”

In addition, the hotel has prepared “special meals for pets” with dietary concerns, Rodriguez said.

Tom Williams, concierge at the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel at 1 W. Wacker Dr., has had guests ask for recommendations on the most exclusive golf course, where to go for cigar smoking or where to go to a hookah lounge. “Most requests are related to dining,” he said.

Williams said he tries to personalize dining recommendations based on the geographic areas where guests plan to go. Guests have wanted to know more about the Wicker Park-Bucktown area for shopping and dining, and Williams had a recent request for information about chartering a boat for fishing.

“As a concierge you really have to be ready for everything,” he said. “And your knowledge of the Internet becomes your best friend,” he said with a laugh.

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By David Jordan from northwest suburbs
Posted: 03/31/2011 5:24 PM

I love it. I bet the tales of concierges could easily fill much more space.