Concierge Services for the Very Wealthy
Switzerland, home to a large number of expatriate billionaires, has a wide variety of services available for the very wealthy, as well many special cantonal jurisdictions which offer tax advantages.
For the particularly wealthy, special concierge services have offices set up in Geneva and/or Zurich to handle extremely wealthy clientele.
The concept of these clubs and concierge services is to offer a complete range of VIP services round-the-clock 7 days per week. These concierge services are geared toward very high net worth individuals who travel frequently and who have neither the time, nor the relevant relationships to obtain rapidly what they want.
Luxury concierges like Quintessentially, which just recently set up offices in Geneva and Zurich, deal regularly with unusual requests. The Geneva manager of Quintessentially reports that his staff had to find 12 albino peacocks for Jennifer Lopez and unearth a mink massage glove used in an old James Bond film for a wealthy fan.
Whether it’s a question of attending an Oscars party or being photographed with a celebrity football player, the VIP concierge service’s role is to fulfill whatever desires or caprices its paying members might have, to the extent that their requests remain within what is legally possible.
A request can take 2 minutes or 2 days to fulfill. Most often, the services requested concern purchases, restaurant reservations, invitations to chic parties or special receptions or sports events, or the organization of trips or parties.
In Switzerland, the most common requests made of these luxury concierge services are for such things as real-estate transactions or the procurement of luxury watches.
Luxury concierge services normally have staff across numerous countries, calling upon perhaps a hundred or more colleagues with lists of tens of thousands of suppliers for the most outlandish or luxurious services. The costs of membership in such a service can be more than $20,000 per year, for which, usually, the member can call upon the services of the concierge in any of a few dozen countries at any time. The services rendered are usually billed additionally.
While well-known figures such as Mick Jagger, Madonna, Richard Branson, and Scarlett Johansson are among the clientele, the most numerous clients are simply very wealthy businessmen who want VIP service wherever they are.
