With its new capital, Welltok plans to finish the development of its new, Watson-powered "Concierge" product line, which will allow users to ask questions about their health conditions and activities and receive personalized answers, along with guidance in the form of "intelligent health itineraries".
In a Thanksgiving equivalent of a hot club's rope line, concierges from the Trump hotel and doormen from 15 Central Park West were at the barricades holding lists of approved people.
While his firm is renowned in select circles for delivering an array of top-of-the-line concierge services, more and more of the ultra-wealthy look to him to help them with constructing indelible marvelous experiences.
I know there are concierge services in other lines of business.
Just 10 years ago, when I worked as a front desk agent for a hotel in New Orleans, I used to watch guests wait five deep in line for the concierge, just to receive a cartoonlike map with their destination circled on it.
An enthusiastic woman in a pantsuit dashed out of a side entrance and introduced herself as a "lifestyle manager," a term I fear the Armani employees use rather loosely, since the services she offered, as she escorted me to the reception on the seventh floor, sounded more in line with a concierge than a therapist.
Concierge medicine, of course.
Business: Concierge at Large, a La Mesa, Calif., concierge outsourcer.
"Especially with the first baby, people go crazy, they have no limits," says Rosie Pope, a New York maternity concierge, designer of a maternity clothing line and star of the Bravo channel's "Pregnant in Heels".
Lately, Registered Traveler operators, the most prominent being Steven Brill's Clear program available at about a dozen airports, have been stressing that along with an expedited check-in line, members also get concierge service.
