About this concierge market reference and how it is compiled

A reference on the concierge market written for the buying side. It records what the delivery models are, what published figures say they cost, which firms publish a presence in which markets, and what the local calendar in each market does to lead times.

It sells nothing and brokers nothing. No arrangement exists with any firm named here, and there is no commission on anything that follows from reading it.

Every number carries a source and the date that source was read. Firm presence is taken from each firm's own published pages. Fee figures come from published comparisons and press, because firms in this category very rarely publish their own. Event dates come from organisers, official tourism bodies and reference works.

Where two sources disagree - and on fees they frequently do - both are kept rather than averaged into a single figure. A reported range of one size and a reported range of another are two different claims, and reconciling them would invent a precision neither supports.

Only firms that publish enough to be checked are indexed. That excludes the single-operator businesses which make up much of the supply in smaller markets, so an empty count on a market page understates that market rather than describing it.

The calendars cover recurring fixtures that measurably change local availability. One-off events and anything below that threshold are deliberately absent, and no attempt is made to be exhaustive about a city's social life.

Each one leads with the calendar, because that is the only thing that genuinely varies by location. Fees do not: they are set per firm and per tier, so the same arrangement costs the same everywhere and is compared once, on the rates pages, rather than repeated seventy times.

The lead time column is the practical output. It is not how long a fixture lasts but how far ahead a request around it has to be placed, and across these markets it ranges from four weeks to thirty.

The index covers firms that publish enough about themselves to be checked: a service description, a market list and, where it exists, a fee. That threshold excludes a great deal of real supply, because much of this market is single operators and small partnerships who publish almost nothing. An entry here is therefore evidence of visibility rather than of quality, and an absence is not evidence of anything.

Every figure on the site resolves to a named source with a date, and a figure that cannot be sourced is not rendered. Where two sources disagree about a fee, both are kept rather than averaged, because the disagreement is the more useful information.

The methodology sets out the rules in full, and the source notes list every publication the figures came from with the date each was read.

Three layers do most of the work. The service pages describe what is actually being sold under each label and where the labels mislead. The market pages carry the one variable that is genuinely local, which is how far ahead a request has to be placed. The rate estimator and the market report hold the published price bands, because those are firm-level facts and repeating them per city would imply a variation that does not exist.

The roles comparison sits alongside them for the question that starts most searches, which is whether the thing needed is a concierge at all rather than an assistant, a manager or an agency.

It carries no advertising, takes no commission and makes no referrals, which is why the pages compare published terms rather than recommend a provider. It is also not a directory of everyone operating: the entry threshold is publication, and plenty of capable firms fall below it deliberately.