John Macdonald, 40, runs his own print management company in East Sussex. He travels on average twice a week, within the UK and across Europe, and wines and dines clients on a regular basis. When a key customer recently expressed a wish to sample a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, he managed to get a table at the notoriously busy Claridge’s restaurant the next day. How? By using the 24-hour concierge service that comes with his Morgan Stanley i24 credit card.
As an existing Morgan Stanley customer, Macdonald was one of the first people to be invited to sign up for the bank’s new ultra-premium card, which is now being opened up to a wider audience via a highly targeted mailing and advertising campaign.
“I don’t have a PA, so if I wanted to book flights or arrange an airport pick up I’d be spending hours on the internet,” he said. “There’s no way I would be able to get a table at Claridge’s at such short notice. Unless you know what you’re doing you just go round in circles.”
The Morgan Stanley i24 card is the latest in a line of ultra-premium cards that come with concierge services. Aimed at busy, top spending executives and frequent travellers, these cards vary in their costs and membership conditions.
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The American Express Centurion, for example, costs £650 a year and is issued by invitation only. The Coutts World card has an annual fee of £350 and is for those earning £240,000 a year or more, while the NatWest Black has a yearly charge of £250 and is open to anyone earning £70,000-plus.
Quintessentially, the private members’ club and global concierge service that’s allegedly favoured within celebrity circles, also has its own credit card that is open to members at all levels: general (£750 a year), dedicated (£2,500), and elite (by invitation only and from £24,000). Quintessentially cardholders are promised the card “will open doors and save you money. At thousands of the best shops, hotels, spas, nightclubs and restaurants all over the globe, you’ll be given benefits (everything from money saving discounts, to special deals, early check-ins and late check-outs) simply by presenting your new card”.
Thanks to a recent tie-up, Quintessentially’s 24-hour concierge service is now available to passengers on London Stansted to New York business-class only airline Eos, promising them access to the seemingly inaccessible.
“Quintessentially considers itself to be more savvy and less corporate than other concierge services,” said a Quintessentially spokeswoman. “The Amex Centurion, by comparison, is an additional benefit to its credit card and doesn’t necessarily concentrate on providing a high quality service.”
Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, claims its new i24 card is different because it’s not all about status and being showy. “The idea of the card is that it’s not about outdated flashy symbols like the Natwest Black card,” said the spokeswoman. “Times have changed. Today it’s not all about status symbols and showing off to your friends. We’re not aiming at the typical stereotypical City type. It’s also for people in the creative services, self-employed people, who don’t have their own PAs who can see the value in the concierge service. It’s not just the managing director, it’s middle management, and it’s not just for when they’re on business. It’s for their leisure time too.”
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The i24 card costs £275 a year and is open to anyone with an annual salary of at least £70,000. Unlike other ultra-premium cards, users get 1 per cent cashback on all purchases and do not have to pay foreign exchange fees. According to Morgan Stanley, the average amount purchased per person on premium credit cards in the UK each year is £28,854 and almost 20 per cent of transactions are made internationally.
“Purchasing this amount on the i24 Card would give cardholders £288 in cashback, in addition to substantial savings on foreign exchange fees, so they would automatically recoup the annual fee,” said a spokeswoman. Cardholders also get access to over 450 airport lounges worldwide, comprehensive annual multi-trip travel insurance, emergency travel assistance, and the 24-hour concierge service.
Andrew Solum, manager for outsourced travel and event management company, Travel Industry Associates, believes credit card concierge services are highly valued by business travellers, even those that have their own PAs.
“A friend of mine in Hong Kong has one of these ultra-premium cards. He was in London recently and had to organise a last-minute table for six at L’Orange. It was out of hours in Hong Kong and his PA was long gone, so he just called his card concierge and it was all taken care of,” he said. “He was staying in a hotel, but the concierge there would not have known who he was but when he called his card concierge, they obviously did. If that’s what it takes to get a table in a top restaurant and clinch a deal, then that kind of service is invaluable.”
But marketing adviser Laurie Young believes these kinds of cards are mainly for “aspirants” rather than for truly successful people. “I think it’s a clever marketing tactic by the cardholders to attract people who aspire to success and want to emulate others’ lifestyles,” he said. “Most successful business people already have people to organise their social lives and won’t pay extra for it. They don’t need help getting tickets for this and that or getting a table at a restaurant. They would have already sorted that stuff out.”
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And fellow critics point out that many of the added benefits of these cards can be found more cheaply elsewhere. According to Cliff D’Arcy at the The Motley Fool (www.fool.co.uk), an online provider of independent financial advice, it would be better to use a credit card with no annual fee, buy an annual travel insurance policy, available for around £60, and airport lounge access, available for £69 plus £15 for each lounge visit. “The only service that I can’t replace is the 24/7 concierge service,” he admits. “But I think I can live without it!”
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