For most moving companies, sending out decoy trucks in the middle of the night or stopping a truck en route to a destination to retrieve a client’s pillow are not part of their standard services. In the newly booming world of luxury relocation services, however, the idea of “standard services” has been tossed aside and only one rule applies—the customer’s wish is the company’s command.

Offering services more commonly associated with a concierge at a five-star hotel, the luxury relocation industry has exploded in popularity during the last several years.

From providing dog-grooming and walking services to researching and recommending private schools for clients’ children, relocation companies nationwide increasingly are hoping to set themselves apart by going above and beyond just moving customers from one destination to another.

While the idea of viewing relocation companies as luxury service providers may still be a stretch to many consumers, Laura McHolm, co-founder and marketing director of Los Angeles, California-based NorthStar Moving Corporation, says the industry is following a well-established path.

“When you look at the Ritz Carlton model for hotels or the Nordstrom model for department stores, they were able to bump it up to the next notch because they really learned to anticipate their customers’ needs,” said McHolm, whose company has been serving high-end clients for several years and gained notoriety after deploying the decoy trucks in a highly-publicized move for Angelina Jolie. “What may seem odd to you or me, I believe we’re there to serve our customer and if that’s what they want, odd as it may seem to us, it doesn’t really matter.”

Indeed, McHolm’s company has had its share of odd requests over the years, from the aforementioned pillow demand, to a client calling in the middle of the night asking for a dining-room chair to be moved to another room in the house.

McHolm says, however, the requests are all in a day’s work. “We truly try to say, ‘sure, you want it, we’ll get it to you,’” she said. “I think that’s what has enabled us to grow, because we don’t laugh at them and we don’t say, ‘you want to do what?’”

NorthStar is not the only company hoping to take advantage of the demand from high-end customers.

The Shallis Group, a real estate services firm in Jersey City, New Jersey, has taken the hotel concierge analogy literally, offering clients a personal “relocation concierge.”

Clients can receive help with anything from setting up utilities to arranging the closing on their new house and, of course, no request is too extreme.

“We can provide just about anything. If you’re asking us for a service we have over 5,000 people in our database,” said owner and Senior Real Estate Strategist, Sean T. Shallis. “From dog walking services to VIP dry cleaning, valet services, [and] helicopter services—we can even give you access to private planes [and] private jets.”

As for the future, it seems likely the industry will continue to expand.

McHolm’s company has plans to introduce several new high-end packages, including a partnership with a company providing plasma TVs and live bird watching for clients’ cats. A plan to provide customers with a personal assistant stalled, however, when the company discovered that a majority of their clients already had one.

And while common sense may dictate that the demand for these luxury services would be on the decline with consumers facing the current downturn housing market and slumping economy, McHolm says the request for luxury services actually has increased during the last year.

“The high-end customer, really, I don’t think has been hit as hard as the middle or lower-end customer has been hit,” she said. “The billionaires are still willing to do it and the millionaires are, too.”

-- David Belian
MOBILITY Editorial Assistant 
+1 703 842 3409
dbelian@WorldwideERC.org