What does it take to satisfy the 0.001%? Brandon Presser goes undercover
to find out. Lavish resorts, Michelin starred
restaurants, secret tunnels, bathtubs. He embeds with the experts
who have figured out how
to keep the obscenely rich, obscenely happy. So you guys have a Mean Girl's
burn book with every guest in it? I'm not supposed to tell you, but yes. I hear the craziest stories
of rich people behaving badly. So as to not reveal the identity of
my guests I am going to turn all of my clients into cartoons.
I write this column for Bloomberg that explores the secret world of ultra luxury, and I inevitably get the question, how did you get these
people to say these things? No other magazine has
ever been able to do this, and so many magazines have tried
to replicate this to no success. But like all of these luxury
brands, I have a secret sauce too. Putting on the uniform is so important. It's like that Clark
Kent to Superman moment. I've done about 20 of these
over the last seven years. Even though every job is luxury, they're all extremely different. You're going to make me cry on my
first day. I was a butler at the Plaza. I was the maitre d at Nobu. I
worked at the Louvre to Disney. I was a deckhand on a private
yacht on a private jet. I was a personal trainer at Technogym.
I've stayed in over 3,000 hotels. I know what a guest wants, so in
that respect, I'm never nervous. I am always nervous that I'm
never going to get the goods, that I'm never going to go deep enough
that I'm never going to get that raw honesty that makes this
column pop, but I always do. I had always been really obsessed
with travel. When I was little, I would ask my parents for
a trip instead of a toy. Then I moved to New York City and
started writing freelance for different magazines. I think the ultra rich are kind of
predictable in how they spend and how they travel because they like to stick
together. So it's New York City, St. Barts, Europe and back, and then
they kind of lather, rinse, repeat. All of these resorts have a variety
of very predictable characters. You have your celebrities of which
pop stars are always the worst. Then you have your C-Suite
execs. So Fortune 500, but if anyone's really keeping
score, it's Fortune 50. You got your real estate
tycoons, you got your tech bros, you got your crypto weirdos,
you got your socialites, whatever. There was this really popular
movie recently called The Triangle of Sadness, and for years I have maintained
my own version of the Triangle of Sadness and it's money, power, and fame. If you want
to be really good at service, you need to diagnose the person you're
serving immediately and then you need to give them the thing they covet. For my most recent job, I was
working at The Carlyle Hotel. Good morning. Welcome to The Carlyle. Which is arguably the best
hotel in New York City. That classic New York Upper
East Side buttoned up luxury and they had me all over the place. So I was in Bemelmans Bar learning how
to make their world famous Martini. Not too much, not too less. You
start to make a mess over here, they're going to put you
to wash dishes downstairs. I was up in room service,
cleaning rooms, making beds. How long does it take to make a bed? Five to seven minutes. Wow. It takes me like 20 at home. We were welcoming a really
important VIP. Can't tell you who, but needless to say, we were
delivering amenities for their dog. When a guest makes a
really ridiculous demand, it's actually a lot of
fun to try to fulfill it. Money has a funny way of making
adults act like children. There was this one time where I was asked
to read Eloise as a bedtime story at the Plaza. So I go up to the room thinking I'm going
to find a six-year-old girl in bed and instead. I am Eloise. I'm 6. I'm a city child. I live at the Plaza. There were four 30-something
adults in one bed altogether, like Charlie
Bucket's grandparents. So from The Carlyle, I then flew
down to Cabo and was working at Las Ventanas al Paraiso
a Rosewood property. Where I was doing all
sorts of things as well. I was working in their world famous spa, and then I was a butler
in their signature villas, which are these beautiful
villas right on the ocean. I would imagine that a lot of
times when guests are checking in, they're really stressed out. How long
does it take for them to de-stress? Well, I try to make them happy with a margarita. So you get them drunk? Who can say no to that?
And one of the hardest things was that I was raking words into the sand so that when guests wake up in the
morning, they see welcome to paradise. I think the realm of ultra luxury
breeds two very distinct types of individuals. You have the people
who live in absolute certainty, and then the people who suffer
from analysis paralysis. So the people who live
in absolute certainty, they want their chicken cut in
cubes and they want their double espresso at 5:00 AM along
with their newspaper. And then the people who live in
analysis paralysis land can't decide if they should have
dinner at that table or at that table, or if it should
be at 6:20 or at 6:23. When is the sun setting?
And at the end of the day, it's much easier to serve someone who
lives in absolute certainty because you absolutely just have to get it right. It's the analysis paralysis people
that are incredibly difficult. So the trick is to deliver
absolute certainty to them. I don't know where I want
to sit at the restaurant. I don't know what time
I should have dinner. You want to sit right by the balcony, sunset at 6:46 and we're going to get
you right there and you're going to watch it. Boom. Done. That's the secret. I have the utmost respect for the
workers who deal with these luxury clients because it's a 24/7 gig.
How long have you been working here? Oh, I've been working here for 26
years now. Wow. The Carlyle is my home. Yeah. Yes. You've made a lot of beds. Yeah, it's fun. I love it. Every day
you come is a different story. And everyone is telling me their secrets
and they're telling me about their life working in these places because they're
passionate about what they do and I never want to take
advantage of that passion. We have kilometers of corridors. We
have more than 750 people working here, and they're all able to go from one
place to another without being seen. And twice a year, we invite the children of the associates
and we give them the opportunity to paint and to draw on the
walls so when the parents comes in the morning, they arrive and they see a message
from their kids and it's just very warm to the heart. They're hesitant of course.
It's a very closed world. It's a secretive world
as you would expect, and there has to be a moment of
proof. I have to put in the blood, sweat and tears. I have to
show them that I'm dedicated. And when I get into the uniform and I
learn the ropes and I learn the dogma and I learn the tricks and I'm out
there serving with the guests, they realize that I'm taking
this really seriously and I am. We're in an era of access. We want to go beyond the authentic
experience and we want access behind the velvet curtain, and
that's what I'm offering. We want the receipts and I'm
giving those receipts to you.
