If you want to get underneath the skin of London, ask a Londoner. Better
still, ask a Londoner who also happens to be Mr Fix-It for some of its
wealthiest visitors, someone who has direct lines plugged into all the
people matter in the capital’s restaurants, clubs and theatres.
Frank Laino at the Stafford Hotel in St James’s has twice been voted best
concierge in the world by Andrew Harper’s Hideaway Report for his ability to
reassure, charm and pull off the impossible. He has the task of keeping this
clubby hotel’s well-heeled, high-spending and demanding guests happy. (And
we’re talking 24-carat powerful: Rupert Murdoch and his son James are both
regulars.)
That ranges from run-of-the-mill tricky: squeezing the right arm to secure a
last-minute table at an exclusive restaurant or a seat in a “sold-out” show,
to the plain bonkers: he once arranged to have a suit tailor made in Savile
Row for a guest’s dog. The hour before I meet him, he had been on the phone
tracking down the one place in the country that offers tai chi lessons on
horseback – for a somewhat wired American lady who insisted on a bit of yin
and yang on the trot. Frank fixed it.
Frank is everything you’d expect from a cunning concierge: behind the desk
he’s the epitome of sober, straight-laced formality, who greets every guest
by name with a cordial smile; away from it, he bubbles with mischievous,
streetwise humour and a fiendish energy that enables him to keep tabs on who
and what is happening around town.
As he says, the world’s great hotel concierges “always have a touch of the
gutter about them – you’ve got to have a bit of cheek to be any good”.
(Frank is a born and bred working-class South Londoner, the son of Italian
immigrants from Campania; the Neapolitan art of arrangiarsi – solving
problems with ingenuity and flair – is in his DNA.)
“I drive people crazy sometimes – ringing them six, seven times a day,” he
admits. “You can’t take no for an answer and you have to be prepared to chat
someone up. Sometimes that’s right, sometimes you have to back off. You have
to know how to play it.”
Frank has been 10 years at the Stafford, and 11 years at the Westbury before
that. (Good concierges, he points out, “lay down roots” in a hotel, and make
strong, long-term contacts. His colleague Michael de Cozar at the Ritz has
been there 30 years.)
In that time the hotel has recognised the power of his personality not only to
keep guests coming back (he is regarded by some of them as a personal
valet), but as a frontline player in its public relations and marketing. If
the Stafford throws a cocktail party for the press, Frank will be there
making the journalists laugh. He goes on gruelling sales tours of the States
with the Stafford’s general manager, Stuart Proctor.
He writes a monthly blog on the hotel website, talking about the best things
going on around London. “It’s a knockabout thing,” he says dryly. “It’s not
a listing. But if I give a good review of a restaurant on that, you can
guarantee every other guest in here is going to want to book it.”
So how does he get those last-minute tables and sold out seats? “A big part of
my job is networking – making the right connections - and eating out. The
head of a top London ticket agency is my best friend. I’ve got to know all
the box office managers through him. So when push comes to shove, I can push
that bit harder for a ticket. And I know people in the business from years
back who now run restaurants, or are in charge of reservations for the big
groups like Gordon Ramsay.”
Guests lean on Frank not only for his enviable contacts around London, but for
his judgment: he has to be a trustworthy restaurant and theatre critic. “I
get top CEOs coming up to me asking ‘Frank, what shall I do tonight?’ They
rely on me to organise their entire evening. Whatever you tell them, they’re
gonna do it. And you can’t do that unless you do your homework. I would
never recommend anywhere I didn’t think was any good.”
The job has plenty of perks, then, and Frank thrives on London’s vibrant
restaurant scene, but tires of the PR machine that has engulfed the trade
over the past 15 years. He has seen all the tricks that “top” restaurants
play in order to keep tongues wagging and column inches filled: saying
they’re full and turning away trade when they’re half empty, for example.
