India is the founder of Sienna Charles, a membership travel agency serving multi-million dollar high-net-worth clients who travel around the world. India recently spoke about her work and her billionaire clients in a Q&A with The Cut.
Her company's offerings include a $75,000 annual allowance for unlimited travel and dining reservations, as well as a $150,000 annual option to add a “lifestyle” element. This includes “arranging spa reservations, recruiting house staff, helping clients build home gyms, or whatever they need,” India told The Cut. .
She shared some of the travel secrets of her incredibly wealthy clients.
Most of Mr. India's clients are former financial professionals aged 55 to 75 in New York City, but in recent years he has also seen increased interest from people working in the finance and film industries in Dallas and Los Angeles. The latest customers are high-tech VIPs in their 40s and 50s.
The typical Indian customer is used to booking hotel suites for $30,000 a night, but that is becoming outdated.
The ultra-wealthy want their accommodations to be stocked with their favorite food and premium water and beverage options, as well as to meet other more specific requests (e.g. space for seven dog beds). , it would be inefficient to train hotel staff on everything within a few days.
More fashionable is staying in villas and yachts owned and rented out by billionaires.
”[The owner] “We customized everything, selected our staff and trained them to meet our out-of-this-world expectations,” India said. He said all this means “customers can feel deeply relaxed because our staff knows how to deliver excellence every minute.”
Unlike us regular folk, the wealthy aren't worried about airline baggage fees — or, to put it another way, they don't pack suitcases at all.
Instead, they ship it, India said, “just put a FedEx label on it and it's at its destination the next day.”
Although Sienna Charles' staff knows all about the best restaurants and how to make impossible reservations, India says many of her customers don't eat out when they travel.
That's the role of their personal chef, she says.
India said the chefs travel with clients and help them maintain their dietary, medical and health goals. She gave the example of a client who traveled to San Francisco for two weeks with a chef and only ate out once.
“He has all the money in the world, but he doesn't want to go to a Michelin-starred restaurant,” India told The Cut. “Many of our customers work really hard, so it's important to them to have consistency and routine no matter where they go.”
If you want to rub shoulders with billionaires this summer, he said, India is increasingly trading in typical hotspots (such as Capri) for more “unique experiences”.
“They go on yachts around Sardinia and to small islands in Sicily,” she said.
Sometimes her clients have specific travel requests, such as wanting a family trip to Rome within a certain time frame. They often talk about their vision in very general terms and ask for help with specific details.
A tech billionaire recently said, “I wanted to go to Europe for nine days in August, just my husband and I, no kids,'' India said. “That's all they said. This is common.”
As for people of more modest means, the best advice for “ordinary” people in India is to avoid places full of celebrities and influencers. Or at least realize that if you go, you're unlikely to have the same top-notch experience.
For example, she said: “If you want to stay at someone's house, lie by the pool, and have access to the beach, the Hamptons is great. But if you want to be chatty, you're staying in a hotel and there's traffic.” It's the worst, and no one is there. If they can't get into a restaurant because they don't know you, it's probably not the best destination. ”
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