Luxury travel and lifestyle management Maison Benjamin is the creation of husband and wife duo Benjamin and Natalie Vaschetti. With an impressive global network of connections – nurtured over decades – combined with hands-on experience in this sector, the two have a complete understanding of the needs and wants of discerning clients. Read our fascinating interview with Benjamin to discover more.
You’ve had an exciting career working with celebrated Michelin-starred kitchens and superyachts all around the world. Tell us more about your career move and the journey to successfully establishing Maison Benjamin.
I feel very lucky and grateful for all these years travelling the world working with chefs in the most amazing restaurants and hotels from Paris to Shanghai via London, then later as a private chef aboard mega yachts in Monaco, Porto Fino, Dubai, Sao Paulo, The Bahamas, New York…….
During all that time, I was lucky to have the chance to live and work in these incredible properties and onboard floating palaces where I was able to witness luxury living at its best. Naturally after more than a decade of cumulated experiences, I decided to launch my own firm as I thought I knew I had what it takes to provide services for those who have done it all!
Please describe a typical day for you – if such a thing exists!
As most people do, I write a To-Do list the night before for what I think my day will look like, but it never goes to plan as our members reach out on a last minute basis with their different requests such as a same-day reservation at a top restaurant or a last-minute corporate trip cancellation and therefore, we are always on standby for the unknown! But it’s probably better that way as no two consecutive days that are the same. Sometimes I call these “fasten your seatbelt” kind of days as we don’t know how things will turn out ….and to be honest I’d rather work like this than follow a routine and boring schedule.
Maison Benjamin was established during the Covid pandemic if/how have the demands of your clients evolved over this time? And how do you anticipate they will evolve over the coming years?
As of now the Covid pandemic is almost an old story and thank goodness for that! However, when we launched in 2020, we had to deal with a progressive return to normality with some places such as restaurants opening at limited capacity, therefore, it was a challenge to make reservations for our clients. Our members were also very cautious about travelling, as some countries had not re-opened yet. Since then, our clients’ demands have evolved in a way that they are less cautious about booking travel or renting villas, or chartering yachts, they just want to go and have a good time no matter what is happening in the world. When they have a desire for something they just go for it, and it looks like it will stay that way for the years to come.
Have you observed a shift in the profile of your clients since your early days?
Not significantly, as our members all come from various background and different locations, but we recently launched our collective corporate membership dedicated to Wealth Management firms such as family offices, hedge fund and other financial institutions and we can see different types of requests from these firms especially with lifestyle management. Our corporate members tend to focus all their requests on client’s entertainment and gifting, which help them with their client retention so that’s definitely a new shift that we did not experience before.
Maison Benjamin understands both the needs and wants of clients. Do you distinguish between the two and if yes is there a different approach to fulfilling each?
Absolutely, all our clients have worked very hard to build their wealth, and at Maison Benjamin we totally respect that and therefore we know and anticipate both their needs and wants. When they start thinking about the idea of needing a service request or a new vacation plan or whatever it may be, we are ahead of them and come up with suggestions for them to review so they know they have some options in the pipeline so they can quickly choose when they are ready to buy or book. Our team takes pride in offering our clients “what they didn’t know they needed…”
Maison Benjamin members have access to some wonderfully unique experiences, which is your current favourite and why?
Both Space Perspective which soon will take you within six hours to the edge of space (with a glass of champagne in hand!) and White Desert Antarctica where you can approach the penguins and walk in the south pole are my two favourites because they are once in a lifetime experiences.
Luxury is highly subjective, what does it mean to you personally?
Luxury is the unknown! What is the limit of Luxury? No one can tell how far it can go and that’s the beauty of it.
Finally, what is your life motto? If you have one.
Something that I constantly remind our clients is; “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough”
