Thanks to the countless connections and ingenuity of the organizers, as well as the unlimited budget of the client, everything impossible becomes possible.
Let's imagine that you want to have breakfast at the top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, or make a last-minute reservation at the famous French Laundry in California, or, even better, dine with the restaurant's chef, Thomas Keller, at his house.
For the vast majority of us, this is not available. But if you are a representative of the elite, who is also willing to pay for saving your time without haggling, then you have at your service a whole army of people - the so-called fixers - ready to satisfy any whim. They can provide the most various services- organize you any trip, introduce you to any home or issue an invitation to any event.
Jacqueline Sienna India is the founder of the exclusive travel company Sienna Charles, and it's not her policy to say "no" to a client.
India organized trips for the top elite, including former US President George W. Bush
Throughout her career, India has faced seemingly impossible requests, ranging from booking hotel rooms that have been sold out for months to shopping accompanied by leading French fashion designers. But in fact, for her, these are daily work tasks.
“If I need to get on a plane or go to the other side of the city to talk to a certain person in order to get any reservation, I do it. Nothing is impossible in the world where I work,” she says.
Once, while organizing a trip to Ethiopia for former US President George W. Bush, India personally carried non-alcoholic beer and peanut butter in her luggage to make sure he had everything he needed.
“It is impossible to prepare for such things. We get a request and I start figuring out what needs to be done to make it a reality,” says India.
Bottomless customer pockets help: “Obviously, if you have enough money, anything is possible.”
But the industry is growing (the rich are increasingly spending money on experiences, not on things), and India's company is just one of many such premium concierge agencies. According to a 2017 study, the wealthy travel industry is growing faster than the travel industry as a whole.
delegating various tasks, freeing up time for new experiences, reduces stress and makes a person happier.
So it's not surprising that people who can afford it buy time with money.
Breakfast at the Arc de Triomphe? Yes it is possible - and very expensive
Bradley Taylor is head of visual merchandising at luxury handbag company Mulberry and travels extensively for work.
Five years ago, he tried a premium concierge service and was immediately hooked.
Taylor says he spends most of his time away from home, between offices and airports, so outside logistical assistance has been invaluable.
Taylor travels with a dog, so the concierge has to find hotels with beds and treats for the animals. And sometimes, staying at a hotel in some distant country, he asks to get his favorite vodka.
He says: “It's amazing how they manage to take care of everything. When I arrive, there is always someone waiting for me. a pleasant surprise and they solve problems that I haven't noticed yet."
Missed a flight? Jenny Graham will find you a private jet in no time
Jenny Graham is the director of the London company that Taylor uses.
Clients do not need to purchase a subscription to use the services of the agency, but depending on the level of subscription, they receive different levels of attention. The basic package includes a service similar to the services of an ordinary travel agency: choosing the best flight or updating the route when plans change - with the participation of an extensive network of fixers around the world.
What's the catch? This is much more expensive than the services of a travel agency. A basic subscription to the concierge service starts at £5,000 a year, while an “elite membership” will cost £15,000. Further go already individual services, and similar companies try not to talk about how much they cost.
Graham's company has five main offices - in Los Angeles, New York, London, Dubai and Hong Kong - and, according to her, no two days are alike in her work.
For example, she recently needed two days (and on an unlimited budget) to prepare an extravagant 60th anniversary in California's Napa Valley - complete with a Michelin-starred chef's picnic-style dinner. And all this in the middle of a vineyard
Two Days and an Unlimited Budget for an Anniversary Party in California's Napa Valley
But, according to Graham, the most difficult thing is in emergency situations. She once had a client who was stuck in Hong Kong due to a flight delay and had to make it to London for an important meeting about the sale of his company, and it would have been a disaster to miss it.
She recalls: “Half an hour later, a private jet was waiting for him at Hong Kong airport, and he arrived in London even before the scheduled time.”
India tells customers it all starts at the airport, referring to high-end lounges that the general public may not be aware of.
There are such halls in Los Angeles, London, Paris and, for example, on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. They do not include airline loyalty program subscribers, they are completely separated from the usual airport infrastructure, and you can get into them only for an additional fee.
Exclusive private lounges at airports allow wealthy travelers to skip security lines with mere mortals
One such lounge is The Private Suite, which opened this year at Los Angeles International Airport.
The cost of services starts from $678. For this money, a luxury car with a driver will pick up the client, guests and luggage from the desired address and take them to a private lounge, where they will be provided with their own security screening. Then they rest in luxurious interiors, and when the time comes, they go down to the airfield and go up to the plane along a separate ladder.
It seems that in this world of luxury tourism everything is possible - if only there was money.
Prepared by Evgenia Sidorova
If at the word “concierge” you imagined an old woman who, day and night, tirelessly guards the entrance to the entrance and vigilantly watches every incoming and outgoing person, get ready to forget about the usual association. The concierge agency has nothing to do with the grannies in the front.
So what does the word "concierge" mean in this context? In Western practice, a concierge is a person who is responsible for running personal errands for their boss or important guests, such as in a hotel. By the way, this activity has been going on for more than a dozen centuries.
To make it even clearer, just remember the movie "The Devil Wears PRADA", imagine yourself in the place of the main character, adjusted for the fact that you have not one boss, but hundreds of different people and companies with different requests. Do you feel that you would brilliantly cope with all the assignments? Are you sure that you would find an approach to any customer? Then a concierge agency as a business is definitely for you.
Business intricacies
The market for concierge services is quite narrow, and it is far from possible to open your own agency everywhere. The target audience is people and companies who find it easier to shell out a tidy sum for the fulfillment of their desire than to do everything themselves.
Therefore, you should focus primarily on wealthy people and large companies. If your city does not have either of them, it is better to look for another business idea. A concierge agency as a business is more suitable for a large city than for a small one.
Among the orders that come to concierge agencies, there are both quite standard requests (wash windows, find a nanny or housekeeper), and unusual ones.
Among the services provided by LIVA FAMILY are cleaning, selection of household staff, various household and business errands, services in the field of luxury real estate (sale, rent, purchase). There are also diverse requests that sometimes do not even occur to us. But people, nevertheless, need to solve them.
What range of services your agency will provide depends on two factors: the frequency of receipt of certain orders and your competence in certain matters. The latter is very important, since the quality of order fulfillment directly depends on it. Even if all the work will be done by your partners or contractors, they need to be controlled.
Working in concierge services requires a lot of composure and patience. It is not always possible to complete the assignment quickly. In our practice, there are orders that take years to complete.
The most important condition for working in this area is confidentiality.
How to start?
In principle, a business in the field of concierge services does not require any special highly specialized knowledge. You don't have to be an engineer or a sailor to fulfill requests. Communication skills are much more important for the head of a concierge agency.
In addition, to start a business, you need a well-formed and time-tested base of contacts, which will help at first, give you a certain confidence. I mean the contacts of those people who can help with the fulfillment of some request, recommend your agency.
Starting a concierge agency usually requires enough big investment. However, I had a certain hitch with the search for investments, and I decided to start working on my own resources. As a result, at first, about 100 thousand rubles were spent on the design of a legal entity, the creation of a website, business cards, telephone, business trips, and so on. In a word, it is quite possible to open a concierge agency with a small investment, the main thing is to have the right contacts, desire and faith in their work.
The biggest investment in such projects requires the creation of a call center that will receive and process requests, “bring” clients and conclude contracts. Accordingly, money is needed to create infrastructure, pay for the labor of many workers, and provide quality service.
But at first, you can do without a call center if you have a phone and a team of 3-4 like-minded people. With this baggage, you can already start fulfilling requests. Standard services such as window cleaning can be outsourced to subcontractors. Try to work with several companies, choose the most best options cooperation for you.
An interesting point in this case is pricing. We do not raise prices for standard requests. For example, for window cleaning, we charge the same price as the contracting company that will do the work. She just pays us a certain commission for transferring a client.
But with unique requests, everything is much more complicated. Here, the price has to be set independently based on the complexity of the task, the cost of time and resources.
Concierge service is a good opportunity for clients to entrust the implementation of diverse tasks to bank employees. Premium-class cardholders can count on fast round-the-clock information support and assistance in obtaining goods and services. The article discusses the features of this proposal in various organizations.
Typically, bank concierge service is offered to premium card holders. Sometimes a list of cards is established that allow you to use this program.
As part of the offer, it is available to get round-the-clock access to various information (restaurants, transport, hotels, resorts, entertainment places, etc.). You can, for example, find out where the necessary organization is located, what its pricing policy, menu, list of services provided, how to get to the destination, Contact phone numbers etc. It also implies the ability to book any service, purchase a ticket.
Some banks provide a separate cost for the concierge service, others include all costs in the service price bank card. This service is activated automatically during the registration of the card. If you do not want to use the concierge service, check with the bank about the possibility of deactivating it. But if the product is provided free of charge, it makes no sense to refuse the concierge service.
To order a specific service, you need to call " hotline”, indicated on the official website of the financial institution.
Basic services within the concierge service
By connecting the concierge service, you can:
This service covers various areas activities.
1. Travel:
2. 
Courier services:
3. Current issues:
4. Solving business problems:
Each bank sets its own terms of service, the list of services provided and their cost. Therefore, the basic features can be supplemented by separate offers.
Sberbank concierge service offers:
In Raiffeisen Bank, the concierge service does not imply an additional commission. The cost of the product is included in the tariff for using the card. Here you can get the following services:
VTB concierge service offers the following additional services:
Gazprombank offers its customers a choice of several cards, according to which the concierge service is provided free of charge. In addition to the main features:
Otkritie Bank offers the following additional services:
Alfa-Bank offers a concierge service to legal entities and entrepreneurs. The first month the service is provided free of charge, in the future its cost is 1,500 rubles per month. The number of requests to the bank is not limited. As part of the basic concierge service, the bank offers to receive.
How will you act if you urgently need to find a gastroenterologist for your grandmother in Tomsk (although you yourself live in Moscow), find an anesthetist for a child, or find out where you can urgently get tested?
The easiest option - “go and google” - is even more or less suitable if you need analyzes for reference in. But if you have health problems, you want to get truthful information about the doctor’s qualifications, and not conflicting reviews about hospitals that you can’t always trust.
Download free app
Download on Google Play
Available on the App Store
Of course, you can look for a doctor yourself. But there is also an alternative. Representatives of a new specialty - medical concierges - can help with the search for a doctor. Let's see what a concierge service is and try to understand how medical assistants can be useful to us.
A medical concierge is a kind of intermediary between a patient and a doctor. The task of the medical concierge is to answer medical questions: how to find a pediatrician in Omsk, which cosmetology clinic in Moscow has a profitable promotion on, and where you can donate blood in Vladimir.
Day after day, the concierge studies open data on doctors, monitors medical forums, maintains databases on laboratories and clinics, and collects reliable patient reviews about various clinics. In addition, the concierge studies medical legislation: he must know how to pass a medical examination, obtain a medical book or a certificate for carrying weapons.
When searching for medical information, the concierge relies on personal experience, real reviews patients and information from the database of hospitals and doctors maintained by the concierge service. Only trusted hospitals with qualified doctors work in the concierge database.
In addition, there are medical concierges who specialize in finding doctors in foreign clinics. As a rule, international concierges recommend doctors from American, European, Australian and even Chinese and Korean medical institutions who have signed a contract with the concierge service.
Suppose you have an urgent medical issue - for example, you need to do a computed tomography, but you don’t want to overpay for this expensive service. On the other hand, I would like the tomography to be carried out by a qualified expert on good equipment.
First you must find a medical concierge and ask him your question. You can do this by calling or writing in chat(try it). We will describe in detail where to look for concierge contacts in the corresponding section. What's more important to us right now is what happens after you contact the medical assistant.
How is the communication with the medical concierge:
There are two types of companies offering medical concierge services today. The former specialize in working with Russian doctors and hospitals, while the latter offer to find a doctor and a medical center abroad.
Medical concierge services that select doctors in Russia:
Medical concierge services that select doctors abroad:
In addition, concierge services can be offered by banks. For example, in the concierge service of VTB 24 Bank, you can also order medical services.
Most medical concierge services are paid. The price depends on how and which doctors the service selects. If the selection of a Russian doctor is unlikely to cost more than 1-2 thousand rubles, then the cost of selecting a foreign specialist can be 10-30% of the cost of treatment.
The price of medical concierge services that select doctors in Russia:
The price of medical concierge services that select doctors abroad:
Although in most cases the assistance of a medical concierge is paid, there is a chance to use the help of a medical concierge for free. This opportunity is provided by the Medical Note application, designed to store medical records.
By installing the application on your phone, you will get the opportunity to contact the medical concierge for free and ask him your questions.
The main difference between the Medical Note medical concierge and the similar Yandex.Health service is that not an algorithm will work with you, but a living person. In addition, Yandex.Health does not yet allow you to sign up for medical tests or procedures like CT or .
Concierge service is a new medical direction that successfully helps people every day. And, although the help of a medical concierge, fortunately, is not needed every day, it makes sense to take care of your health in advance. To do this, just install the Medical Note application on your phone. The application will always be at hand, and you can ask a question to the medical concierge for free at any time.
Recently I was connected to the concierge service. While I did not use it, because there seemed to be no need, but when I began to tell my friends about it, there was not a single one who knew what it was. Everyone asked the same question "What is it?".
We already know firsthand what a cleaning service is. This is when, instead of keeping a cleaning lady in the office, professional cleaners with equipment come there and clean the premises.
a little less people know what a catering service is. This is when office employees do not bring food from home, do not heat it up in the microwave and do not run to a nearby grocery or fast food, and a car with a hot lunch comes to them at lunchtime and feeds all the company's employees. This is beneficial both for employees who receive good meals and for company management, which does not have to think about how to provide food for employees or bother organizing their own kitchen.
And now we come to what concierge services are. They can be completely different, both for individuals and for organizations. Today we will touch on individuals.
I will not hide, I have already heard about one concierge service, to which clients of one big bank when opening an account. But to become a client of this concierge service, you need to deposit at least 2 million rubles in the bank. =)
It is clear that not everyone has that kind of money, so I perceived the concierge service as something elite, inaccessible to ordinary people.
But it turned out that there are much more affordable concierge services.
So what is a concierge service? In a very primitive way, this is a cross between a very super developed 09 and a personal assistant assistant.
That is, the concierge service will tell you everything: where there is the right medicine, when some organization is working, they will make an appointment for you, buy tickets for you, order pizza for you and much more.
Well, in order not to guess, I will now just reprint a list of what one of these IQ Service concierge services does, what they tell people there:
film review and screening times,
score of sports competitions,
food order,
reminders,
weather forecast,
traffic jams on your way,
ordering plane tickets and much more.
Example: You arrived in an unfamiliar city and want to have a bite to eat in some good, but not expensive restaurant, no more than 10 minutes walk, with Italian cuisine, where there would also be empty seats and a smoking room. And also, so that in an hour a taxi would arrive at the restaurant and take you to the station. Where you would have already booked tickets for the next train, in the compartment car, on the bottom shelf.
That's how many conditions we set! =)
Now you don't need to surf the Internet from your mobile phone, you don't need to ask passers-by, you don't need to download your local friends (if they are there at all). It is not necessary to rush about, thinking about what to grab onto and how to be in time. It is enough to call the concierge service, and they will immediately tell you where you need to go, call a taxi, book tickets (of course, if they are available, and if there are no tickets for the desired train, they will offer an alternative). And there are many such examples!
I will write some examples of very real requests made by people through this service:
Request:
A car wheel was punctured not far from 18 Ivana Franko Street. You need to find the nearest tire shop.
Solution:
The nearest tire shop is located 800 meters along Ivana Franko Street. Reported address, phone number and cost of tire fitting - 900 rubles.
Request:
The client needs to urgently get from Moscow to Nyagan. There are no direct flights for the requested date. The client reported on the option he found with a transplant. Asks if there is a better option.
Solution:
A more profitable route with 1 transfer was selected. The savings for the client amounted to more than 18,000 rubles. The tickets were booked and delivered.
Request:
The client wants to fly to Thailand on vacation for 1 week. He asks you to choose the cheapest option.
Solution:
With the help of our partner, an option was found for a trip to Thailand to the resort of Pattaya at the Fortuna 3 * hotel, breakfast, 7 nights for $ 399. Arranged booking and purchase.
That's what a concierge service is. Now know and don't say what you haven't heard!
By the way, on the site that I gave for the sample now there is a promotion - you can connect this service for free for one week, so that each of you can now try it.
