Ten years ago, one major airline CEO said travel agents are “dinosaurs.”

Bill Fischer: Well there aren’t very many airline CEOs who have figured out how to make money. We make money, and in fact, the current fee to join is $100,000 – that’s just to start with us.

You started charging fees before any other travel agents.

Bill Fischer: When I started charging fees in the early ’80s, I realized I was able to provide service and access other travel agents couldn’t. People said customers would walk across the street, and I started with $5,000 and then it went to $10,000.

But if you wanted a certain suite or villa during a certain period I was the only one who could get it. So you could walk across the street but if you had to have that specific suite, I was the only one who could get it. It wasn’t about let’s try to get you an upgrade. It was you tell me what you want and I’ll get it.

What’s your secret?

Bill Fischer: We don’t give up. Years ago I had a customer who wanted to get into a specific ski resort in Europe during Christmas week. The first time I called, the reservations manager told me that there were more than 30 people on the waiting list in front of me. So very nicely, everyday for two months, I called her twice a day. She finally told me that she talked to me more than her husband.

The next day I got a confirmation for my customer. People like to deal with us because they know we care about our customers and they know our customers are willing to pay. A couple years ago, the vice president of a luxury hotel group called me up because he couldn’t get a VIP into one of their own hotels on a holiday. He told me, and I called the hotel and I got his VIP in.

When he asked the hotel how his VIP got in they said, “We always take care of Mr. Fischer.” So we persevere. We cultivate relationships. We deliver a lot of business to these hotels and we pay for what we want, so when you want something we can get it. That’s why we can charge.

It sounds like you are becoming a concierge service.

Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal: The concierge services don’t really do what we do. We do anything and we do it well. We had somebody who was telling us they wanted to get their brother a Breitling watch for his birthday. Well it turned out the brother was in Manchester, England. So we got someone to get the watch in London when the store opened the next day and then deliver it to him in Manchester.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made?

Bill Fischer: In all our years, we have had two bad staffers. Those two were the mistakes, but if you look at most of our team they have been with us 15 to 20 years, so of course we have all sorts of confidentiality and no-compete agreements for the staff, but for the first three or four years you really don’t know what we do. We’re like the Secret Service.

And how are your agents different from other agents?

Bill Fischer: As an example, we once hired the top Platinum agent from American Express. She told us it took her nine months until she could get to our level.

Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal: It’s all about service. We are on-call for our clients all the time, and there is always somebody to take care of anything. It takes someone who really cares to take their Blackberry home with them and sleep with it, but everyone here really cares. We realize that we deal with incredibly wealthy and powerful people, and we make sure as best we can that when they need something we get it for them.

It sounds gruelling.

Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal: Well during the volcano, we were all basically collapsing. We were working 24 hours straight then right back at it trying to find creative ways to help our clients, but everyone who is here loves what they do, so that is incredibly energizing. Everyday we have a different creative challenge and a timeline to get it done, so the idea is to come up with something that is incredible.

So tell us about one of your most interesting creations.

Dee Branciforte: We had a 50th birthday party for a client who was a wine aficionado. It was a surprise party so we were working with his wife. We came up with an amazing three-day trip to Napa. They lived here in New York and there were about 30 people who were going to the party.

He thought it was just a regular trip with his wife, but when he showed up at the FBO, we had chartered a Boeing Business Jet and his friends were all there to travel with him. When he got on the plane we had his favourite music playing and his favourite movies loaded on the video screens.

We had the wine theme, so the invitations to all the guests came in wine boxes—but instead of a bottle of wine, there was a wine blending kit [inside]. When we got to Napa we had all the guests blending their own wines and designing their own labels.

People brought pictures of their families and summer houses for the labels, so it was incredibly fun—and since these were all ultra-competitive people, there was a lot of testosterone. Then we had visits to wineries that are closed to the public and private tastings with the owners and winemakers.

There was a golf tournament on a private golf course where all the guests arrived by helicopter, and so after the first two days, everyone was worried there was going to be a letdown.

Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal: The final dinner was in a private winery and we got Thomas Keller to close French Laundry for the night and he and his team personally cooked the meal in the winery. And then the surprise is we had, with his wife, taken some of his favourite wines from his personal wine cellar back home and that is what was served.

He couldn’t believe we had taken these wines and he hadn’t noticed, and he was so happy because these were the wines he had wanted to drink at his birthday but he assumed they were still back in New York.

Bill Fischer: So it’s the big touches and the little touches. Frankly, anyone can charter a jet or take over a hotel.

So that trip must have cost millions. Is that unusual?

Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal: The big events don’t happen all the time, but we always have clients traveling, and we just had a client who took her children on a three-week trip to Europe and she spent as much. One of the hotels was $40,000 per night, and she didn’t want to worry about the details.

The only thing we had to say was, “can you make sure you are at the airport by 9am so the pilots don’t lose their slot?” Other than that, there was nothing she had to worry or think about. Everything was taken care of.

Bill Fischer: It’s constant checking in. We are always busy. During holiday periods everybody may have 20 or 30 open files [clients traveling]. It is organized chaos.

I heard that you once redesigned a hotel.

Bill Fischer: With the Four Seasons Resort Nevis, they didn’t have enough connecting rooms. I was in a meeting with [Chairman] Isadore Sharpe and they had only 11 connecting rooms, so I showed him which of my clients – the CEO of this company, and the CEO of that company – weren’t going to be able to have connecting rooms. And he picked up the phone and called his president, and ordered 38 more connecting rooms.

Have any other hotels made changes to their infrastructure based on your feedback?

Bill Fischer: Parrot Cay in Turks & Caicos. I went and wasn’t impressed so I put it on our “do not book” list. Then a new general manager came in and I went back down, and the service and the food were terrific, but the pool wasn’t heated and it was too cold in January.

So I told the general manager and he told the owner, and the owner didn’t want to heat the pool as it is very expensive. I said to the owner, “you swim in it” and he did – and to his credit, he made it into a heated pool and now we send a lot of business there.

But the best time to talk to us is before you start. Jim Manley opened The Ranch at Rock Creek. He took us out there way before he opened, he listened and he is going to do very well. We have a lot of knowledge.

So your father is famous for not publishing his phone number. Are you moving things forward?

Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal: Actually, no. We know our clients. They find us. And we don’t have a web site. For our clients, it’s totally irrelevant. And when you’re our client, you have our cell phone.

Bill Fischer will deliver the closing address at our Luxury Society Keynote in New York City on October 15th 2013, sharing his insights from working first-hand with UHNW individuals

Please see the following link for full details of our agenda and speakers