Olivia Ferney, chief marketing officer at Top Tier Travel, has given an account of working the Top Tier Travel concierge circuit for ultra-high-net-worth clients, a world in which a $400,000 gift is a routine purchase and a $900,000 gambling loss is simply a piece of news to be delivered.
Ferney’s account, shared as a first-person essay, cuts against the assumption that extreme wealth is synonymous with unpleasant clients. ‘My clients are some of the best, most interesting people I’ve met,’ she said. She and her fiancé Troy vet prospective clients together and decline those whose manner does not suit them.
What Top Tier Travel concierge clients actually pay
The access Ferney describes does not come cheaply for those on either side of the relationship. According to The New York Times, each client must commit to an annual fee of $100,000 and agree to book at least $1 million in travel per year. That entry point defines who is even in the room.
On top of that, The Times has reported that Top Tier Travel charges clients between $2,500 and $8,500 a month for its concierge services. Taken together, those figures describe a model where the service fee alone can run into six figures annually, before a single flight is booked or a restaurant table secured.
The scale helps explain what Ferney describes as a fundamental shift in her understanding of refusal. Growing up in Canada, raised by two guidance counsellors, she learned to accept that ‘no’ was a final answer. Working with clients who have the resources and relationships to work around almost any constraint changed that entirely. Some of her clients, she said, have never been told no in their lives.
Life behind the scenes of the Top Tier Travel concierge operation
The operational reality of servicing clients at this level is more demanding than the social-media highlights suggest. Ferney and Troy spend roughly 300 days a year travelling and have no permanent home. Managing international logistics for clients often means working through the night, and the cumulative toll became physical: Ferney said she began losing her hair due to stress.
Since then, she has overhauled her approach to self-care, testing cortisol levels monthly, meditating twice a day, prioritising sleep, and being deliberate about moments when she steps away from her phone. She acknowledged that being completely unreachable, even briefly, would likely cause her acute anxiety.
The role has also altered the pace at which she moves through the world more broadly. She describes herself as a ‘chameleon at work’, operating at the fast tempo her clients expect. Returning to her family’s 100-acre ranch in Canada requires a conscious deceleration, touching grass, literally, and leaving her phone behind at breakfast.
The financial rewards have matched the demands. Ferney said she is now earning three times what she once considered a strong salary, a level of income she did not know was available to her a few years ago. Her ‘metrics for success’, as she put it, have shifted accordingly: access to people and knowledge that can build wealth in ways she had not previously imagined now forms the new baseline.
The lifestyle has occasionally extended to her family. Last New Year’s Eve, a client flew Ferney, Troy, and their families (including her parents and brother) to Las Vegas for a weekend she estimated cost around $100,000. A private performance by Carrie Underwood was among the highlights; her stepfather touched Underwood’s hand during the set.
Ferney acknowledged the arrangement is not indefinitely sustainable. The travel volume and pace that define the Top Tier Travel concierge model at its current scale are, by her own assessment, something she will need to recalibrate over the longer term. She has not stated when or how that recalibration will happen, only that she is aware it must.