Hotels Try New Ways to Cut Costs at Concierge Desk : Accommodations: Some hoteliers staff the post with novice workers, others bring in employees of tour companies.

If you’re a traveler who relies often on the kindness of concierges, it may be time to do a little more looking out for yourself.

A seasoned concierge has the ability to make things happen, from wangling rare theater tickets to prying loose reservations at popular restaurants to renting a yacht on short notice to filling a prescription at midnight. Such persons are a standard part of high-end hotels at the Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons level, and they are among the reasons that some travelers are willing to pay $150 nightly and more.

Since the late 1980s, hotel industry veterans say, many hoteliers have staffed concierge desks with relatively inexperienced hotel workers without any particular expertise. And in two controversial cases in San Francisco, hotels are using employees from an outside tour company to cover the concierge job, thus cutting labor costs while appearing to offer guests the same level of service.

Stanton Higgs, general manager of Gray Line Tours in San Francisco, affirms that Gray Line employees have been staffing the concierge desk at the Hyatt Fisherman’s Wharf since the hotel opened in late 1990. Though the concierge desk workers draw their paychecks from Gray Line (and direct hotel guests to that company’s offerings), they wear the same uniforms as the Hyatt staff, he said. Similarly, Higgs affirmed, the San Francisco Hyatt Regency on the Embarcadero adopted the same practice about 18 months ago. At both hotels, callers who ask for the concierge are transferred to Gray Line personnel. (Conversely, the Grand Hyatt at Union Square in the same city has a concierge staff that includes six members of the Les Clefs d’Or, the leading international organization of professional concierges.)

Gray Line staff are assigned to lobby duty in six other San Francisco hotels as well, Higgs said, sometimes serving under the Gray Line name alongside in-house concierges, sometimes operating as a “tour and transportation desk” rather than a concierge desk.

It’s nothing new for a tour operator to strike an agreement with a hotel; that practice has been widespread in the tourism industry for decades, and helped Gray Line rise to its prominent position nationwide. In San Francisco, Gray Line offers 20 different day tours, from a one-hour $16 trolley car introduction to a 16-hour, $115 Yosemite pilgrimage by train and bus. Gray Line’s biggest competitor in town, Tower Tours, offers 10 itineraries at comparable prices; Tower manager David Jones estimates that Gray Line has 70% of the market. (Gray Line is not a single company but a Dallas-based association of independently owned and operated tour companies that market themselves jointly and set common standards. The Gray Line operator in San Francisco is Grosvenor Bus Line.)

But industry veterans agree that relying on an outside contractor to take over concierge duties is a novel approach. John Neary, concierge of the Carlyle in New York and U.S. president of Les Clefs d’Or, calls it “an experiment that will fail. There are a lot of problems with having someone dressed up as a hotel employee who is not a hotel employee.”

Higgs, on the other hand, suggested that the idea could travel to gateway cities such as Los Angeles and New York.

Higgs added, however, that few hotels generate enough business to justify the expense of permanently assigning staff members there. “It doesn’t make sense (for Gray Line) to be a concierge in most of the hotels in San Francisco,” he said.

Meanwhile, yet another approach is being pioneered at San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel, where management of the Kimpton hotel group recently discontinued staff concierge positions. After conversations with Tower Tours, the hotel early this month entered into an agreement with a group of veteran area concierges who will work in the hotel as independent contractors, taking income from guest tips and commissions on referrals to tour companies.

Nationwide, the number of professional concierges has risen substantially since Le Clefs d’Or started accepting U.S. members in the late 1970s. Neary, Les Clefs d’Or president, estimates the group’s membership at about 300. Each has at least five years in the hotel business and three years of concierge experience. Through the last few years of recession, Neary says, “we did have several members that experienced--how shall we put it?--restructuring. The more deluxe luxury properties are committed to having concierge service. Business hotels . . . may have flirted with it, but are not necessarily committed to it.”

If you are curious about a hotel’s commitment to service at the concierge desk, there are a few key questions to ask. Are there any Les Clefs d’Or members on staff? Is the concierge desk staffed by a seasoned hotel employee, or is it essentially an outlet for tour and rental-car companies?

Beyond that, Diana Nelson, the Grand Hyatt’s concierge, says a guest can assess a concierge operation by watching to see “how much help is volunteered , as opposed to someone just answering questions. A truly professional concierge wants to make a difference. . . . It isn’t enough to be a disseminator of information.”

Reynolds travels anonymously at the newspaper’s expense, accepting no special discounts or subsidized trips. To reach him, write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.