Marion Brusseaux timidly advances in front of the assembly gathered on the terrace of Fouquet’s, a luxury hotel on the Champs-Elysées. Straight skirt, tie, jacket with badge: at 22, she wore the austere uniform of the students in her class. On this June afternoon, we celebrate the graduation of his training for the hotel concierge profession. A unique course of its kind, provided in a hotel high school in Toulouse, in partnership with Les Clefs d’or, the International Union of Hotel Concierges.
For a year, the students, generally holders of a BTS or a license, learn their future profession: realizing and anticipating the desires of a clientele that is rich to the point of excess, demanding to the point of whim, and accustomed to to be served. Book limousine services, helicopter transfers, find a dentist in the middle of the night, give exhibition advice, privatize a restaurant. Marion Brusseaux also learned the physical discipline and interpersonal skills associated with her role: the bun, the straight posture, the precise and subdued gestures. Her southern accent, which she tries to tame, is not welcome in Parisian palaces. “When I’m on duty, I pay close attention to it”confides this Toulouse woman, daughter of a cook and a carer.
Training graduates have little difficulty getting hired, and starting salaries are around 2,000 euros net, according to the young graduates interviewed – that’s more than a receptionist. For hotels, concierges are important: customer loyalty depends on the efficiency of these handy men and women, who take turns day and night. A palace can have around ten. At the George-V, in the Champs-Elysées district, in Paris, there are sixteen of them. Marion Brusseaux, top of her class, has just signed a permanent contract at the Park Hyatt Vendôme, where rooms cost around 1,500 euros per night. Within five years, it too could become a “Golden Key”.
A form of prestige
Founded in Paris in 1929, this international network, as mysterious as it is little-known, brings together around three thousand luxury hotel concierges. In France, nearly four hundred of them display the golden emblem of this corporation on their jackets. Not everyone can enter: in addition to a few years of experience, you must be multi-sponsored and pass a written and oral exam before a jury. Knowledge of Parisian monuments, the difference between a Birkin bag and a Kelly, specialties served at the Michelin-starred restaurant La Tour d’argent…
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