Ticket To Heaven: Some Ideas On Tapping Into The Private-Jet Set

It used to be that rich customers found a travel agent quite simply because aside from going to an airline ticket office, a visit or call to a travel agent to enquire about flights was the way to start planning a trip. “I need two first class tickets to Paris” was often followed with questions about booking hotels, drivers, tour guides, and such.                   

And while many very rich people still fly commercially on long-haul flights, a lot of the Super Rich fly via private jet, particularly within North America, to Mexico and the Caribbean. 

Now you may say, no problem Doug, I have private jets covered.  My agency group or consortium has a preferred relationship with private jet company X, Y, or Z.  If that’s the case, hang on for a bit and read on.

Interestingly, travel agents weren’t the only ones who found a proximity to the airlines profitable in the long-gone days of commercial aviation glory.  Recently I was speaking to Michael Reslin, who heads sales for Caruso, an Italian tailor that caters to the Ultra High Net Worth crowd.  Its first U.S. location opened last year right behind the Four Seasons hotel in New York, sporting its own kitchen, private salons, and a secret passage to Lavo, one of the city’s hot nightclubs, located in an adjacent basement.

Previously he was with another high-end Italian suit maker, Brioni, focusing on VIP sales. That included trips to the White House to outfit President Bush 2. When he joined Brioni, Reslin began researching the company’s history. He found it gained its cachet and reputation for glamor in the 1950s by catering to Hollywood movie stars. Inquisitive, he wanted to know how a small, single-location tailor in Rome with no overseas locations was able to attract the likes of Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, and John Wayne.

Well, the answer was simple. The founder, Gatetano Sardini, opened his shop on the second floor of a building on Via Veneto, which was then the street with all the airline ticket offices. Brioni, named for an Adriatic island famous for polo and socialites, was just upstairs from TWA. While airline tickets and faring may be confusing today, back before computers changes often required calculations by expert fare analysts. Instead of waiting across the desk from an agent, the rich and famous would gravitate upstairs, intrigued to find out what the store Brioni was all about.

Speaking about the founder, Reslin told me, “He came up with an idea. The rich, who can afford to fly, have money, and with no telephones at the time, had to go to the airline office.”

Today it’s probably harder to find a city ticket office than a brick-and-mortar travel agency.  And to the point with Caruso and its new location, on the other side of the Four Seasons is Zilli, a high-end French atelier where you can pick up a crocodile briefcase for around $15,000 and the aforementioned Brioni. 

As you think about some of your favorite big-city luxury hotels, there is probably at least a smattering of high-end fashion, watch, and jewelry companies in the building or very close by. The Peninsula in Hong Kong has its own two-level shopping mall with Tiffany, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton.  The Peninsula in New York has a Wempe watch boutique where you can drop $50,000, or even $200,000. Across Fifth Avenue from the lobby of the St. Regis is a DeBeers diamond jewelry boutique.

Like the Brioni store above the TWA ticket office, when selling expensive stuff to rich people it’s often helpful to be near where they are.

Selling travel to the very rich
So let’s get back to very rich people, private jets, and you. It’s safe to say that the luxury travel arena is one area in which travel agents have proven they can excel.  It’s somewhat hard to imagine the Super Rich putting together complicated European itineraries on their own, although sometimes personal assistants and in-house travel departments assume these tasks. 

At the same time, many of the very wealthy already have their own private jet solutions:  They own their own jets.  They have a fractional share or buy their own jet cards.  They have access to a corporate jet for personal travel.  They already have their own preferred charter brokers.  They don’t need a travel agent to help them get where they want to go. And they don’t need you for a private jet solution.

In many cases charter brokers of private jets do not own nor even operate the aircraft they charter.  For the most part, like tour operators, they are sourcing product from third parties.  According to the National Business Aviation Association, in the United States alones there are several thousand brokers. Some are divisions of companies that manage jets. Some also sell prepaid jet cards. Many are boutique operators, specialists not much different from travel agents. And each has a list of customers who calls them when they need to charter an aircraft.  When one considers that private jets charter for between $5,000 and $20,000 an hour, their customer lists are quite valuable.

Perhaps it would make sense to reach out to a charter broker in your area and create your own referral network?  When your charter broker gets a pricing request, it can ask if the client needs the help of a good travel agent for ground arrangements.  Now in many cases the client may be flying to a house or already know where they want to stay, but then in other cases the person may be interested in tapping into the knowledge of an expert. 

There are also opportunities for cross-promotions.  You email your list promoting the charter broker and the charter broker introduces you to its clients.  The broker business is low-margin and ultra-competitive, so having a partnership with a savvy luxury travel agent could be a differentiator.

Another opportunity to get close to the very rich folks who fly by private jet is to reach out to the Fixed Based Operators (FBOs) at your local airports.  “FBO” is industry lingo for private-jet terminals.  Many of them also have hangars housing the jets of your local well-to-do, and others manage jets for your very rich townsfolk.  There are several big chains of terminals but it is still a very fragmented industry with lots of independents.  At some airports there are as many as five or six FBOs, and at most airports of any size there are two or three.  Many FBOs sell advertising in their terminals and like you are local business owners and mangers. It certainly is worth a conversation. They definitely know the private jet users in your community.

Doug Gollan is a member of Travel Market Report’s Management Board.  He is a CTC and a member of The Luxury Marketing Council, and is working on his third book, “Sales Superstars:  Secrets of Selling to the Super Rich.”