Meet the luxury travel ‘fixer' whose calls with demanding mega-rich clients have made her a social media star

Independent

4 days ago

Even for Olivia Ferney, renting an entire "branch" of the Palm Jumeirah archipelago in Dubai was an unachievable request — even if her job is making the impossible a reality for her mega-rich clients.
"It's like asking to rent a province or state," she said.
Olivia has fast become one of the world's most sought-after luxury travel "fixers" and a social media star to boot.
She has garnered a following of 289,000 people for her @travelwithlivii Instagram account, where she posts videos of calls with her wealthy clients making demands most would view as ridiculous to the point of surreal.
Instead of losing her cool, Olivia always pacifies the caller and calmly offers a solution.
But the 25-year-old Canadian, who is the marketing director and travel specialist for Top Tier Travel, told The Independent that hiring a slice of Dubai's Palm was even beyond her now-legendary abilities.
She revealed that the request came from a "lovely client", a young girl upset about her dad's remarriage to a young new wife and so she was in need of being cheered up.
Olivia explained that this client will happily charge half a million dollars to her dad's credit card while on vacation.
"She called me, and she wants a full arm of the Palm in Dubai, which is not physically possible for me to rent. There are homes, there are hotels… it's basically like asking to rent a province or a state. It's just not feasible. That one shook me to the max.
"We did not get it done, will not get it done. It is impossible to do stuff like that."
In the end, Olivia booked her first class with Emirates, which features a shower suite, and the penthouse at the Atlantis, The Palm, "which is still $50,000 a night".
She added: "Dad is totally fine with it, because he needs to keep his daughter happy and not mad."
At the time of writing, this call hadn't been uploaded to Olivia's Instagram page.
One of the calls that's been filmed and sounds the most absurd to a non-billionaire — though competition is hot — came courtesy of a client demanding that a hotel remove all the "slow walkers" from the property.
The call went like this:
Caller: "The room is sick, the food is great. I just have a tiny problem. The people here are walking really f***ing slow. I've never experienced anything like it. Can you fix that?"
Olivia: "I can't fix the speed of the people. Why don't you walk around them?"
Caller: "I walk around them and then what? I could trip or get a blister in my nice shoes."
Olivia: "I'll give concierge a ring. I could get a golf cart to drive you around so you can get places a little faster. Give me 30 minutes to check it's possible. Sorry you're dealing with that."
Caller: "I guess that'll do for now."
Olivia has also soothed a client asking for an emergency helicopter extraction to a party in Mykonos, another who complained her lemons weren't vegan enough, one who refused to drink her margarita until she knew where the limes were from and a customer who "didn't like seeing other people in the spa".
Then there was the client who would only wash her hair with imported spring water.
Suspicious these are made up? You're not alone. Plenty of commenters on Olivia's feed don't believe the calls are real.
Olivia stressed that they definitely are, but aren't necessarily filmed "live".
She explained that every post is made with the client's express permission, but is often reenacted, either with a friend or with the client themselves.
And the clips are proving so popular among ultra-high-net-worth clients that many are desperate for one of their complaints to be featured.
Laughing, Olivia revealed: "I have new clients that are outrageous, and I love them, but they want to be on the calls. They'll call me with absurd requests that you've seen on my social media and afterwards will text me and ask, 'Did you record that?' I'm like, 'No, if I didn't tell you that I recorded it. I did not record it.'
"A lot of new clients are just obsessed with the Instagram page. They want to be a part of these crazy stories. Partly because they've found someone who understands their request and can handle it and they want a little spotlight moment on Instagram. I did not think it would go that way, but it has, and it's very interesting."
Olivia takes everything in her stride, explaining that "staying cool is better for everyone", but she does have red lines. For example, she will not fix anyone with "girls" or drugs.
"We do not help our clients receive anything illegal," Olivia said. "And if I get a drunk text from a client at 2 a.m. asking me to get them 'cute girls to hang out with', it's deleted."
Olivia said that she also gets "standoffish" with clients who have paid five figures but expect treatment commensurate with paying six.
She revealed: "Top Tier Travel does not handle concierge services. We are an accommodations-based company that gets five-star hotels at the best prices, but we have a very select group of ultra-high-net-worth people and celebrities that we handle 360 for, and that group pays a lot of money and we handle everything for them.
"However, sometimes somebody who spends $10,000 expects us to be able to handle everything they see online and is suddenly calling me and saying, 'Where's my helicopter? Where's my private chef?' That's when I tend to get a bit more standoffish. They're not paying me for this and I'm not there to be their slave."
Are there some types of rich people easier to deal with than others?
Olivia revealed: "That is absolutely a thing. Tech people are my favorite people in the world. Even the crypto guys are usually super nice. We had a group of crypto guys that just went to Mykonos, great guys, so easy to work with. They wanted nothing but Kit Kats. I'm like, 'I will get you millions of Kit Kat bars!' What a blessing of a client.
"I will say musicians have tended to be a little bit more particular, especially more well-known people. But some of them are lovely. And then reality people can be difficult, but I've also had some good reality people."
She continued: "The toughest group is that middle wealth, people that spend like they're billionaires, but are 'just' millionaires.
"For example, they'll hire a mega yacht for $300-$400,000, then get furious because they get post-purchase anxiety, because they know they weren't supposed to spend that money. And they want a refund. Which is ridiculous. They'll make up 'issues' with the trip to try and get cash back every time. Never going to happen."
The hotel brands that give Olivia and her clients the least amount of stress — therefore conversely are not so great for Instagram clicks — include Rosewood, Montage, Four Seasons, Aman, and Cheval Blanc.
Olivia reveals that she knows just how good the world's best hotels are because she visits them personally, spending "several months a year checking into them to check they're up to scratch".
And that includes adding personal touches to rooms her clients are booked into, such as family photos or favorite snacks.
She sometimes even gets to travel with her wealthy clients.
It's all quite a change in lifestyle for a woman who grew up on a farm in Dundas, Ontario.
The high-flying life began after she met the founder of Top Tier Travel, Troy Arnold, at an event in Miami, when she was running her own marketing firm.
"I forced my way into the company," said Olivia, "and convinced him that I could help with the marketing. He was doing zero marketing at the time, and slowly we started to play around with social media and throw stuff at the wall, until something stuck. And the calls stuck. And now the business is growing astronomically."
So, what's next for her?
Non-stop work, it would seem.
She said: "There are always new hotels we need to check out since social media exploded. And there are all these new boutique spots that we didn't even know were available that have reached out. And now we get to check out that stuff.
"We work seven days a week, 20 hours a day. It's constant."