Oct. 1--Boston Red Sox star Manny Ramirez was waiting impatiently for the staff at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort to figure out where a rental car agency had parked his Cadillac. A rental agent was stumped. But the Vinoy's Joanne Cherepon attacked the case with phone receivers jammed in both ears. 

"I'll get to the bottom of this, Mr. Ramirez," the St. Petersburg hotel's concierge assured the VIP guest. She needed only a minute to solve the mystery and find the car. 

Fixing and apologizing for other people's mistakes. Recommending restaurants to near strangers. Trying to coax a smile out of the crankiest hotel guest. It's all in a day's work for the roughly 50 people who staff the concierge desks at top-tier hotels in the Tampa Bay area. 

"In this job you never know what's going to be thrown at you next," said Cherepon, who has fixed evening gowns with paper clips, found florists for weddings on three hours' notice and filled the rooms of lovers (licit and illicit) with dozens of lit candles for a romantic weekend. 

Tampa Bay area concierges have seen it all. One was chewed out when an armadillo that a guest had mailed home died in transit. Nursing mothers overnight them breast milk packed in containers with dry ice ahead of their arrival for storage. Guests are smart enough not to ask where to buy drugs or hire hookers, but requests for limo tours of Tampa's notorious strip clubs are standard fare. 

Patty Crisp, concierge at Saddlebrook Resort in Wesley Chapel, was just getting to work at 8 a.m. when a limo returned jammed with partyers, including a guest for whom she'd arranged a night of racy hot spots that began at Mons Venus. 

"How did your night go?" she asked. 

"Great," the bleary-eyed guest replied. "I think it's still going on." 

Despite the constant smiles, these are not the best of times behind the concierge desk. Gratuities can be generous for over-the-top attention. But only one of about 20 guests helped leaves a tip. Otherwise a concierge earns $8 to $10 an hour in the Tampa Bay area, the same as a front desk clerk who works more predictable hours. During the lingering tourism slowdown, hotel managers eliminated many concierge jobs and cut the work schedules of others to trim costs. Now some hotels are replacing them entirely with outside contractors at so-called tour desks. 

"Concierge is a job you do because you love it and truly enjoy helping people," said Ingrid Boudouris, a Santa Fe, N.M., concierge who is president of Les Clefs d'Or USA, the American wing of the profession's elite certification association. "Unfortunately, only about half of our members earn enough to support a family. And since the terrorist attacks last Sept. 11, a lot of hotels have yet to fully restore their concierge service." 

Concierges have been around for centuries. In the Middle Ages, they handled custodial duties in monasteries and palaces. The French word means gatekeeper. By the 19th century, the concierge had evolved into a profession of savvy uniformed doorkeepers whose job was to make guests feel welcome in the grand hotels of Europe. 

Concierges chose crossed keys as their professional symbol to show they had the power to "open doors unavailable to the average traveler," wrote concierge Holly Stiel in a handbook called Ultimate Service. 

In the 1980s, concierge-style services spread across the United States to most full-service hotels wooing upscale customers. More recently, the concierge concept of attentive customer service has branched into office buildings, malls, health clubs, department stores and auto dealers. 

But the epitome of the craft remains the 3,400 members of the elite Les Clefs d'Or (pronounced lay clay-door), a French organization that maintains strict ethical standards and tests prospective members, who can be nominated only after working five years in a hotel and three years as a lobby concierge. 

Yet the only two Clefs d'Or members working in the Tampa Bay area left their hotel jobs some time ago. One is now a concierge in a Tampa office building. The other, Michele Jones of Wesley Chapel, began a career as a meeting planner. "The problem is the hotels in Central Florida just don't want to pay much for the service," said Jones. 

Hoteliers say the market here doesn't require the top-dollar benefits concierges command in more cosmopolitan cities. 

Tickets to shows and sporting events are relatively easy to come by in Central Florida, they say. Even big spenders are not too demanding. It's not hard to get tables at even the most exclusive restaurants. 

"Unlike San Francisco, New York or Washington, D.C., this is a tourist market that does not require the most sophisticated concierge service," said Russ Bond, general manager of the Vinoy. "But we feel the concierge is very important, and in many ways they become the personality of our hotel." 

The job comes with some clout because a concierge steers big-spending hotel guests all around town. On a winter weekend, the concierge at Saddlebrook sends 70 to 100 people to restaurants, twice that on peak weekends. Many prominent restaurants go out of their way to be in a hotel's good graces. "We've got a couple of restaurants on Clearwater Beach that hold a table or two just for us every weekend night," said Charles Creel, guest services coordinator at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort and president of the Tampa Bay Concierge Association. 

Some hotels get cash commissions as high as 15 percent from car rental agencies, attractions and ground transportation services for business originated on their property. A few share the money with their concierges. 

All but a few hotels forbid their concierges from accepting money from restaurants they recommend. But they don't object to restaurants currying their favor with occasional free meals so they know the fare. Attractions also frequently drop by to dangle free admissions in return for concierge referrals. But many concierges consider accepting them unethical except to test out an experience they might recommend to a guest. 

Some concierges value their credibility so much that they refuse to recommend restaurants that paid for listings in the slick Concierge Recommends menu books their hotels display at their desk. 

Nonetheless, new players are changing the financial arrangement. Dozens of three- and four-star Orlando hotels have turned their concierge desks over to outside contractors. The biggest concierge desk operator is Universal Orlando, which runs them in 41 hotels. Other desks are being taken over by companies that supply ground transportation. For participating hotels, renting out the concierge desk turns an expense into a revenue source. 

The Hyatt Regency Tampa recently joined the movement. The downtown Tampa hotel transferred its concierges to other jobs. Tampa Bay Tours, a new venture controlled by owners of the StarShip Dining Yacht, installed its own staff of concierges. Their salary is paid by cash commissions earned selling attractions tickets and car rentals. Eventually the company hopes to get a payment for every hotel guest sent to a participating restaurant. It is negotiating similar deals with six other hotels. 

"Tampa Bay is one of the few major tourist markets left that had no contract guest services desks," said Troy Manthey, president of StarShip, which through an affiliated company staffs concierge desks in 21 hotels in New Orleans. 

"We think they are as professional as what we had," Hyatt downtown sales director Dan Kuperschmid said, "plus the desk is staffed more hours of the day." 

Concierges take a dim view of the newcomers. "Having outside contractors who live off commissions defeats the whole purpose of a concierge," said Rich Esparza, president of the Central Florida Concierge Association in Orlando. 

Only about a third of the Vinoy's guests ever speak to one of the hotel's six concierges. But managers say they're worth it because the concierge seeks out problems to solve and is available to help any hotel guest. 

"They are expected to know the city like the back of their hand," said Bond, general manager of the hotel, which keeps two on duty most of the day. Half of their day is consumed giving directions and recommending places to go to an endless parade of passersby. The rest of the time is spent booking reservations for hotel limos, babysitters, restaurants and anything else a guest asks for that's legal. 

One recent day, a guest wanted to know where he could buy 15 $50 savings bonds. Another eager to check in to the hotel called from a cell phone thinking he was close, only to learn he was driving around downtown Orlando. 

Concierges are the go-to people who arrange most hotel extras. Flowers, chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne-laced bubble baths await guests looking for new ways to celebrate an anniversary. One Vinoy concierge, who got a local tryout for American Idol, even serenades birthday parties at the hotel restaurant. 

Guests don't always have to ask for special treatment. The child of a Vinoy guest, for instance, was overheard complaining last Easter about missing holiday candy, so the concierges hit the sweet shop. When the family returned to their room later, they found a card, hidden chocolates and the Easter bunny's footprints in flour that had been pressed onto the carpet. 

During a normal day, Cherepon makes and revises dozens of restaurant reservations. 

"That party of 20 I booked for dinner on the 30th is now 13," Cherepon said as she amended a reservation at Julian's, an upscale steakhouse, for the fourth time. "And they are coming at 2:30 p.m. on the 19th." 

She also wrote personal apologies and vouchers for free breakfasts to make peace with three hungry, stranded hotel guests. Someone -- it was never determined who -- booked the threesome for breakfast at the hotel golf course restaurant on a day it was closed. 

Guests are steered to the concierge for off-the-wall challenges. Cherepon has taken measurements and arranged same-day service for a tailored suit, shoes and tie for a guest who left his formal clothes at home. One weekend, a Saddlebrook concierge found a seamstress willing to earn $600 working Easter Sunday for a Gentlemen Quarterly fashion shoot. "I've even done Pete Sampras' laundry," concierge Crisp said. 

Concierges take their role as a travel counselor seriously. They maintain encyclopedic lists of everything from trusted ticket brokers to the closest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. 

Helga Hoskins, a 12-year veteran concierge at the Hyatt Regency Westshore, keeps an accordion file in her car trunk that she constantly fills with brochures. After taking an adult education course called "101 Things to Do in Tampa Bay," Hoskins realized she knew more than the instructor. Now she teaches the class. 

Handling celebrities is a concierge's art form. Many travel under assumed names and wear disguises. Starstruck concierges had to keep mum Super Bowl weekend when Jay Leno arrived by helicopter for one-hour private party appearances at the Westin Innisbrook Resort and the Vinoy before jetting back at the end of the day to Los Angeles. They also refrained from joining in when Daisy Fuentes put on a break-dancing exhibition in the Vinoy lobby. 

"Julie Andrews had on so many scarves I didn't recognize her even after I was told she was here," said Hoskins of the Hyatt Westshore. 

Wolfgang Puck, who frequently stays at the Vinoy for Home Shopping Network appearances, asks for restaurant recommendations through a personal assistant. 

"The first time I picked a place for him, I worried all day about what he thought," Cherepon said. "Now he goes to Redwoods most every time he's here." 

One extra touch for VIP guests is a welcoming message from the concierge left on their room phone at check-in. But not everybody welcomes the attention. 

In the Vinoy concierge manual are typed instructions for handling a cantankerous Hollywood mogul: "Please do not leave VIP messages for Mr. Barry Diller!!! per Management and Mr. Diller!!!!!!" 

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(c) 2002, St. Petersburg Times, Fla. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. CDF, HOT,