Editor’s Note

Prior to starting Luxury Attaché, Jenene Ronick worked as Director of Guest Relations at CNN for seven years. She attended the University of Colorado, Boulder and received her M.B.A. from the NYU Stern School of Business.

Company Brief

Luxury Attaché (luxuryattache.com) is the world’s premier lifestyle concierge, catering exclusively to select leaders in the real estate, entertainment, corporate, hospitality, and fashion industries. Among the first of its kind to operate on a business-to-business model, Luxury Attaché has set the standard for personalized service across the country, offering access to an unrivaled repertoire of lifestyle expertise.

What did you see in the market early on that made you feel there was an opportunity to create this company and differentiate it?

As my first rollout portfolio of properties with the Carlyle Group, in taking a look at the demographic in the buildings and the services provided, I realized that nothing was truly customized. The vision, to which I still hold tightly today, is about providing exemplary customized customer service with one dedicated Attaché on site, and making residential buildings feel like hotels. Clients enjoy that level of service from obtaining difficult restaurant reservations to a full service travel agency and event planner. We try to loop all of the services that you’d need recreationally inside of a residential building, all serviced by one onsite Attaché.

Is the primary focus residential or will the growth be in hospitality as well?

We’re growing rapidly in three different pillars of business: first is the hospitality side, springing off the success we’ve had with the Highgate Group.

The second is the corporate side, represented by clients like Google or Town Residential, for which we’re taking a look at servicing tens of thousands of employees and enhancing their retention programs with the same-day turnaround of concierge-esque services in a corporate environment.

The third focus is event planning for major corporations that are looking to make an impact with an event.

Is it hard to differentiate in this space?

We try to avoid using the term “concierge” for just that reason – we try to circumnavigate the Attaché program by using all of the corporate support back in our offices.

The Attaché program is systemized so clients know they’re going to get the best value and the best service, the most exclusive places, by using the infrastructure that we have created over the past 12 years.

The space is noisy and crowded, but we really try to only service iconic landmark buildings with a clientele that appreciates the services we provide. This goes through for corporations, investment banks, hoteliers, and real estate developers, both commercial and residential.

On the hospitality side, where everyone talks about true hospitality being personalized service, is it harder to personalize it in that environment?

The transient nature of a hotel guest is certainly very different from that of a resident living at one of our properties, but our marketing department does a fantastic job by sending out pre-arrival welcome letters that outline exactly what is happening in town prior to arrival.

Let’s say you’re coming the week before Christmas: a plethora of different events will be highlighted in that e-mail so you can pick and choose and customize your trip prior to arrival, working hand in hand with the onsite Attaché.

There is a lot of back-and-forth correspondence with the guests before they arrive in New York City, so as soon as they come to the hotel, we’ll have a highly customized itinerary for their week printed out and ready upon arrival. This happens all year long.

Our marketing department pushes content tirelessly to guests to let them know the kinds of things they can take advantage of at the hotel, and much of it is exclusive.

Over the past dozen years, we have cultivated these relationships to offer exclusive, engaging experiences and that is the differentiating factor inside of a hotel.

What is the secret to having that access?

It has a lot to do with our eclectic, experienced staff. They all come from different backgrounds, be it PR, event planning, theater, music, or marketing, so they all have their own Rolodex of contacts that help our clientele. Luxury Attaché is viewed and respected as an industry benchmark due in part to the clientele we handle. In many of these cases, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

When we call the best restaurants in New York, they know automatically that those we send over, whether celebrities or athletes or polished professional clients, are going to show up on time and look good.

The clientele that we send speaks for itself. These are the exact clients that restaurateurs and vendors want to accommodate.

What is your focus on the event side?

In December, for instance, we produced an amazing event for Cartier in New York that served all of their most important clientele for a week.

For this type of clientele, it was important for them to have access to the best restaurants and galleries, and to be able to do personal shopping before the store opened and after it closed. Everything was seamlessly executed and a big part of that was having one dedicated Attaché for a small number of clients.

Our system is not a call center where calls are shuffled around but a real relationship in which clients and their clients work closely with one dedicated Attaché. Using our CRM system, which has been perfected over the past 10 years, we track the trends of all of these clients, which allows us to proactively offer them ideas and services based on previous choices they have made.

Is there a focus on expanding into other markets or will New York remain the primary focus?

New York is our sweet spot, but we’ve begun expansion in Miami. We’re excited to launch the residences by FENDI Casa and we’re working with several developers over the next six months to roll out dozens of new high-end residential projects for which Luxury Attaché will be onsite from the very first move-in. We’re looking at other similar projects in exciting residential areas in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

We also have a lot of our clients traveling to Chicago and Seattle, so we have our finger on the pulse of all of those dining destinations, as well as museums and boutiques. San Francisco is the next phase for the same level of clientele and real estate.

For hotels, as long as there is a cosmopolitan program that demands access and convenience, they would be welcome as part of our portfolio.•