“Don’t leave home without it,” ads for American Express used to advise. Then the options expanded. Chase Sapphire. Chase Sapphire Reserve. Venture Rewards, followed by more Ventures with more Rewards.
“We’ve been leading the travel space for over a hundred years,” Antonia Olimpio, the New York manager of American Express’s travel-services department said the other day. She wore a cream-colored blouse and matching pants. “Travel has changed. A two-hour delay? That’s pretty common, nowadays,” she said. “If you know that, in your back pocket, you’ve got somebody to call, that’s where we come in and show our value.”
Olimpio is one of nine regional experts charged with insuring that Amex’s seven thousand travel consultants—the voices on the other end of the 1-800 number—know what’s up. Hottest table in town? “That depends,” Olimpio said. “Who’s the card member? Someone that’s really particular, or a little more laid-back? Super high-end, or sort of chill?” She continued, “I have a list that’s broken down into all sorts of categories. Romantic, splashy seafood, young dancing, more mature dancing, uptown, downtown, girls’ night.”
Every week, Olimpio checks in on venues that are already in her recommendation engine, or are vying to be. Stop one: tea at the Baccarat Hotel. “So, some people are doing business,” she said, surveying the second-floor salon, all high ceilings and gleaming glass. “Some people are just on their phones. It’s calm. Quiet.” She peered up at a light fixture, a chrome bar with glowing orbs. “No dust,” she said. “No fingerprints. Flawless.” She slid into a booth with Emily Vicker, a co-worker. “I try to do these visits with at least one other person,” she said. “It ends up being a lot of food.” Olimpio, who is thirty, used to work for a luxury life-style-management firm; her duties included some high-end dog walking.
“You mess that up, it’s probably worse than forgetting to pick up their kid,” Vicker said. Tea service arrived, followed by judgments. Blini with caviar and quail egg: “Insane,” Olimpio said. Scones with clotted cream: “Incredible.” The check was signed, an UberX ordered, an appraisal made: faultless. “But am I going to recommend this place for a family?” she mused. “Crystal and kids? Not a good combo.”
Stop two: the Carlyle, which underwent a renovation during the pandemic. “You still have Diptyque in the bathrooms, right?” Olimpio asked Marina Poole, a sales manager who led a tour. “Or is it Le Labo?”
“We’ve been kind of struggling to get our normal supplier,” Poole said. “It’s Kiehl’s.” She showed them a twenty-sixth-floor suite that includes a baby grand piano and costs forty thousand dollars a night. “It was booked for the Met Gala and the U.N. General Assembly,” Poole remarked.
Over a “dirty dirty” Martini at Bemelmans, Olimpio said, “It’s good to see that they’ve kept the charm but updated the rooms.” She noted the USB ports on the nightstands. “When I travel, if there’s not an outlet right by my bed, I’m, like, ‘What the hell?’ ”
Stop three: Casa Cipriani, which sent its house car, a tangerine Aston Martin S.U.V., to ferry Olimpio and Vicker down to South Street.
“To be honest, it has no power,” the driver said. “I heard it’s meant for women.” Olimpio replied, “I will drag-race you any day.”
A tour of the maritime-themed hotel, private club, gym, and spa—cryotherapy chambers, logoed kettlebells—led to another table, and another sampling of high-carb specials. “We don’t have stemware,” Juliana Marchini, Casa Cipriani’s global sales director, said, of the Martini glasses. “When Harry’s Bar opened, in 1931, in Venice, there were no stems. It’s meant to make you feel like you’re on the Titanic or the S.S. Normandie, which actually sank in New York Harbor.”
Disaster-at-sea reference aside, Olimpio said, “This is for someone who’s just really about the exclusivity.” She twirled a forkful of tagliolini and mused about pastas past; in college, she’d studied in Rome. Asked if she had any Rome recommendations, she said, “Oh, yeah. But all the places I’m thinking of are pretty much holes in the wall.” ♦
