Latest news with #OliviaFerney
The Independent
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Meet the luxury travel ‘fixer' whose calls with demanding mega-rich clients have made her a social media star
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."
Times
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
My bizarre life getting billionaires what they want
Olivia Ferney had a problem. She was looking after a multimillionaire Miami businessman in his forties, who was sailing on a yacht around Greece in the Aegean. Yet however lovely that might sound, the man was not content. The yacht was nowhere near the isle of Mykonos, where he had just heard about a 'sick' party he 'had to attend'. 'He really, really desperately wanted to go to this party,' Ferney, a marketing director and travel specialist with Top Tier Travel, said. 'It was literally do or die. He was, like, 'I need to go right now. If you don't get this for me, screw you, screw your business. I'm going to take you guys down'.' Instead of hanging up, firing him as a client or simply saying 'no can do', Ferney soothed him and sprung into action. She knew some friends on a nearby yacht with a helipad. She chartered a smaller boat to take her client to that yacht while arranging for a helicopter to whisk him off to Mykonos. The total cost to get to a 'sick' party on time? $100,000. Welcome to the travels of the rich and highly demanding. For Ferney, who is unnaturally calm in the face of chaos, nearly no client demand is too crazy. In the past month the 24-year-old Canadian has become a social media star, posting videos that show how she deals with the most challenging rich people in the world, under the Instagram handle @travelwithlivii. The videos almost always present Ferney sitting in a car, at a hotel, or on the go, answering calls from clients. No matter how odd or outrageous their requests, she immediately assuages their concerns. While most of the calls she videos are re-enacted with the permission of her clients, some of her clients agree to re-enact the calls themselves. 'Some clients have zero problems with me sharing stuff,' Ferney said. 'They're great. For most of them, I just change their name. And they have a blast with it, so it's really, really fun.' Ferney says the richer people are, the easier they are to handle. 'A lot of clients in the multimillionaire status tend to be tougher than the billionaire clients,' she says. 'They're more particular — I always found that very, very interesting.' She speculates there must be a 'sweet point' where you 'just have to become a nice person because everybody you're hanging out with has so much money. You can't buy friends. So you just become a super nice person.' Ferney, who launched her social media account five months ago, tells me the videos 'kind of took off' and her audience now reaches 400,000 followers across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. It's easy to get sucked into the account, which features demands so cartoonish they seem too satirical to be believed. Take the woman who refused to drink her margarita until she knew exactly where the limes came from. The conversation went like this: Client: 'I'm OK but I'm not great … I'm allergic to certain limes from certain countries … because of the pollination … I don't have signs like my face doesn't swell up, but I know intuitively my body is rejecting it.' Olivia: 'I will get in touch with provisions and find out where they source their limes from.' Other videos are titled: 'Dad sending daughter on a $200,000 vacation after getting engaged for a third time'; 'Client demands $10,000 upgrade to escape children … worth it? [yes]'; 'Client won't wash her hair until someone hand delivers imported spring water'. And so on. 'Honestly, those stories are 10 per cent of what I deal with,' Ferney says with a laugh. But is she not risking her business by disclosing the private demands of her clients? Are future clients, who prize their privacy, not put off her social media presence? And who the hell would agree to be recorded complaining about the size of a hotel's ice cube? Ferney says her clients 'don't find that stuff embarrassing. These are very common conversations for a lot of these people, and when you're able to have everything in the world all the time, whenever you want it, however you want it, there's never enough. 'So when they're in their circles, getting the right pink G Wagon for their two-year-old daughter's birthday, getting the right Birkin bag tomorrow in Capri, getting the jet that's the right colour. Like, those things really matter to these people. And it's my job to validate them and just make it happen.' But confusing situations can arise from Ferney's video recreations. For example, one client saw a video that sounded like a vacation she had taken — and assumed Ferney was making fun of her. 'She was like, 'What the f***? I took this exact trip, or I'm taking it in two weeks. Like, is this story based off me?' And I felt so bad because a lot of these people are taking the exact same trips. It was totally not based on her.' Raised in Dundas, Ontario, a farming town with a population of 20,000, Ferney grew up in a middle-class family that 'still can't believe the stories I tell them when I go home'. In college she majored in marketing and organisational behaviour — while running a social media marketing company on the side — until she met Troy Arnold, the Top Tier Travel founder, during a trip to Miami. One year ago, Ferney moved to Miami and joined Arnold's company, where clients pay $2,500 to $8,500 a month for concierge services. Ferney claims she works seven days a week and is home only one month of the year. She is mostly on the road, 'in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dubai and Europe … usually checking out all of the five-star hotels around the globe to make sure that everything is up to par, like a secret shopper'. She needs to make sure every space her clients enter is free from 'any weird noises. There's no weird smells. The staff are all treating people correctly'. In her time with Top Tier Travel, Ferney said she had arranged for a $200,000 yacht to sit outside a Caribbean villa in case a client wanted a change of scenery. 'It simply sat there docked outside the house for the whole trip.' She has arranged custom room services and menus for clients' dogs. And she has flown a lavender spray from London to France for a client who refused to sleep anywhere without it. • Walkies at 30,000ft: my flight on the luxury airline for dogs But she puts her foot down when it comes to one request: 'Many people want me to be a matchmaker for them, and I make my line very clear … I would never.' In a summer when every billionaire is flaunting their wealth and access across Europe, sometimes even Ferney cannot pull an elephant out of a hat. Especially when all these people want the same reservation at the same restaurant at the same time. • My day as a paparazzo chasing Jeff Bezos' wedding guests 'One per cent of the time, there is not a bribe in the world that can make that happen,' Ferney says. 'Especially when it's all billionaires competing against billionaires. At some point, a $20,000 bribe doesn't do shit.' Paula Froelich is the senior story editor and on-air contributor for NewsNation. You can follow her own travels with the rich and famous on Instagram at @pfro.
Daily Mail
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Outrageous demands from jet-setting billionaires when they stay at the world's best hotels: 'They lose their minds'
Olivia Ferney has had lobster flown across islands, been berated over the brand of bottled water in a minibar and nearly lost a $100,000 booking because there weren't enough TVs in a mansion. But her most viral moments come when she reenacts these luxury travel meltdowns on her TikTok, @travelwithlivii - dramatic phone calls with clients flipping out over crystal meditation rooms or gluten-free bread gone rogue.
