Hotel Concierge Services: A Comprehensive Legal and TourismBased Analysis

Abstract

Hotel concierge services play a crucial role in luxury hotels by assisting hotel customers with reservations, ticket purchases, lodging, shopping, and travel planning. Despite their importance, the lack of explicit regulations regarding these services, particularly concerning contractual relationships and liabilities, leads to practical uncertainty. The main purpose of this study is to define and clarify hotel concierges and their services in the hospitality industry from the perspectives of certain fields of law, namely commercial law and law of obligation. In principle, two contractual sources of concierge services exist for hotels. One of these sources is the independent hotel concierge agreement, which explicitly defines the scope of services. Alternatively, provisions related to such services can be included in hotel/accommodation contracts. In practice, a typical service provider is typically hotelier. However, the service is provided by concierges employed at hotels, who generally hold the status of commercial agents with special authority. The hotel concierge agreement can be classified as an atypical, innominate, or imperfectly bilateral contract. As a principle, provisions regarding the contract of mandate are applicable to such agreements. Liabilities arising from concierge services depend on whether the service is provided by hoteliers or by independent professionals. In principle, the hotelier and concierge cannot be held liable for services provided by third parties in connection with the concierge services. A concierge agreement may be terminated by mutual consent, unilateral termination, or the impossibility of performance. If concierge services are part of the hotel/accommodation contract, failure to provide such services may affect the validity of the contract. This study is novel in its aim of drawing attention to the need for more investigation and regulation of hotel concierge services and those providing them, and may serve as a guideline for future attempts in this field.

Keywords

• Concierge
• Hotel concierge agreement
• Les Clef d’Or
• Merchant assistant
• Commercial agent
• Representation
• Turkish Commercial Code
• Turkish Code of Obligations
• Legal liability

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