Tom Wolfe, chief concierge at the Fairmont San Francisco, greeted me in the lobby of the palatial hotel, which opened in 1907 atop the expensive Nob Hill enclave. Impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit festooned with decorative pins, Mr. Wolfe claims to be first concierge in the United States — the concept didn’t exist in American hotels until the 1970s, he said. Richard Swig, who was then the owner of the Fairmont, asked Mr. Wolfe to create a concierge program in the image of hotels he had seen in Europe, where the service concept of “one-stop shopping,” as Mr. Wolfe put it, already existed.

“Before concierges, sometimes hotels would have an airline desk, or a shipping desk,” he said. “But there wasn’t one place where you could get a shoe repaired, a dinner reservation and, oh yeah, I’d like a Ferrari GTO.” That actually happened, he added, when he was at the Plaza Hotel in the early 1990s, right after Donald Trump had purchased it. Mr. Wolfe found the car, in the color the client wanted. The client then purchased it for $6 million.

The key to being a good concierge, he said, is motivation. You have to want to help. That, and good planning. “Anticipation is key. Have a Plan A and a Plan B. And also a Plan C and D.”