City Concierge Background
City Concierge provides comprehensive information and travel services for visitors and corporate groups to the Mammoth Lakes and Lake Tahoe Resorts. As a web-based "one-stop shop", City Concierge (www.CityConcierge.com) works with lodging properties, tour operators, sport activity providers, outfitters, and retail establishments to provide myriad vacation choices. City Concierge has become the visitor's online resource for planning their vacations. The web-based service provides a complete 24-hour digital guide to the resorts amenities and activities. The website is user friendly and easy to navigate. It allows visitors to self-service their own travel requirements, yet also provides them ability to have a personal “concierge” plan their getaway.

The City Concierge website uses a content management system to produce interactive web pages, dynamically created on the fly. This allows site visitors to access the most current information available. The Homepage ties together the individual resorts, which allows a user to navigate to the individual Mammoth and Tahoe then portals. Each portal starts with a “City Page” providing current activities, weather, along with travel promotions.  “Where to Stay”, “What To Do”, “Where To Dine”, “Outfitters”, “Real Estate”, “Special Services”, “All about….” All have expanding menus that show a web visitor all possible content. Along with multiple weather choices, maps of the area, the options allow a visitor to find personalized information based on their criteria.



As lodging is the most important part of traveling, the “Where To Stay” section includes the ability to make real time reservations, and features a unique interface, which aggregates all the lodging companies and hotels in the area into a single search.  With the entering of travel dates, the reservation “engine” polls the connected companies and returns in real-time all available choices that can be instantly booked. Unlike other larger travel sites that are allocated a limited number of units to sell, which leads to sell outs, the City Concierge software ties right into the databases of others, creating a larger supply chain, and therefore is never artificially sold out.

 The Special Services channel outlines key businesses that offer high-quality services. The Outfitters channel lists companies who provide rental gear and guide services. Sections such as Community Services show second homeowners the services that they might need on their more regular visits to the region.  

City Concierge was created in August 2002, and is managed by long time ski-enthusiast and marketing veteran Jefferson Lanz. “There are so many great things to do in California; I wanted to share my enthusiasm with everyone. The mountains are  a great mental break from the city,” says Lanz, who found that there was a need for aggregated information, especially around lodging. According to the Visitor’s Bureaus, 25% of all winter visitors don’t ski. “I wanted to create a site that would cater to visitors with complete information so you don’t have to sit in a condo and watch TV reruns if you don’t ski or play golf,” says Lanz.

City Concierge, in actuality, is a marketing company connecting visitors, corporate groups, and businesses together. With a holistic approach to aggregating the tourism industry, City Concierge works with individual businesses and helps to point consumers in their direction. This relationship develops through advertorial content, premium listings on the website, and personal recommendations, which is the information and service consumers expect when contacting a traditional concierge. Prior to the website's expansion, local businesses had taken a singular approach to promoting themselves; consequently, neither the town nor Mammoth Mountain had concentrated on the individual visitor needs or experience. Ironically, Lake Tahoe is very similar even though more developed. This opening allowed for Lanz to work directly with businesses that concentrate on the visitor experience and show them how to use the power of the Internet to do it.

City Concierge represents an opportunity for individual businesses to stand out, have a unified consistent Internet presence, which represents the resorts and the business in the most positive light, and a viable means to attract and cater to the number one reason they exists, tourism.