“Welcome to the future of luxury travel!” says Filippo Torriani, CEO and Founder of Queen of Clubs, as we dive into a deep conversation about how their new in-house technology is set to reshape the luxury travel sphere.
Founded in London back in 2009, Torriani explains how Queen of Clubs is a Lifestyle Service Provider that revisits and transforms the very essence of luxury travel. As he likes to put it: “It is a revolution in travel sophistication and perceived elegance. Our mission is to redefine luxury travel through cutting-edge technology and innovation. We offer travel solutions and craft experiences that transcend expectations. In our offices, excellence is not just a goal but our standard”.
The company operates solely with travel organisers, delivering to travellers who expect beyond unparalleled quality. Needless to say, their ultimate vision is to set a higher benchmark for service quality and sales precision, and so this concept is strongly reflected in their work. Their commitment to impeccable procedures ensures that every interaction and every journey is nothing less than exceptional all the way from the United Kingdom up to Ibiza.
Founded in London back in 2009, Torriani explains how Queen of Clubs is a Lifestyle Service Provider that revisits and transforms the very essence of luxury travel. As he likes to put it: “It is a revolution in travel sophistication and perceived elegance. Our mission is to redefine luxury travel through cutting-edge technology and innovation. We offer travel solutions and craft experiences that transcend expectations. In our offices, excellence is not just a goal but our standard”.
The company operates solely with travel organisers, delivering to travellers who expect beyond unparalleled quality. Needless to say, their ultimate vision is to set a higher benchmark for service quality and sales precision, and so this concept is strongly reflected in their work. Their commitment to impeccable procedures ensures that every interaction and every journey is nothing less than exceptional all the way from the United Kingdom up to Ibiza.
Though the company was initially established in London with their main headquarters, Queen of Clubs is now present with physical offices in five distinct countries - Spain, UK, France, Switzerland and Italy -, positioning itself as a top provider of luxury lifestyle & concierge services across all of them.
More recently, Torriani and Jennifer Frusci-Virgilio, Managing Partner, decided it was time to invest heavily behind the scenes in a new, exciting in-house technology to further elevate the brand and help solve some of the daily ‘challenges’ to make work much more efficient.
More recently, Torriani and Jennifer Frusci-Virgilio, Managing Partner, decided it was time to invest heavily behind the scenes in a new, exciting in-house technology to further elevate the brand and help solve some of the daily ‘challenges’ to make work much more efficient.
Filippo Torriani, CEO and Founder of Queen of Clubs & Jennifer Frusci-Virgilio, Managing Partner
“Creating the first draft of a travel proposal was one of the most time-consuming steps in our booking process. With an extensive portfolio of destinations and experiences, our bookers had to manually build itineraries day by day, to identify the most suitable services. This limited the time they could dedicate to what matters most: understanding clients’ needs and delivering a truly personalised experience. Our objective was to empower our designers with a solution that would accelerate proposal creation while maintaining the high standards of quality and creativity our clients expect,” he outlines about their innovative tech solution, created to make the design and processing of quotations much more attractive, faster, and allowing them to be white-labelled too, among other features.
From receiving an enquiry to delivering a beautifully designed quotation, the process today looks ‘a little’ different compared with before, and Torriani admits the impact has been significant: “Today, our bookers can generate a high-quality first draft of a travel proposal in less than five minutes, replacing a process that previously required hours of manual research across historical bookings and our experience catalog. The new tech solution also intelligently combines services based on historical booking patterns and our catalog, automating repetitive tasks while preserving consistency and quality”. Consequently, he adds, their own global teams spend less time assembling itineraries and more time advising clients personally, fine-tuning proposals, and creating exceptional travel experiences.
From receiving an enquiry to delivering a beautifully designed quotation, the process today looks ‘a little’ different compared with before, and Torriani admits the impact has been significant: “Today, our bookers can generate a high-quality first draft of a travel proposal in less than five minutes, replacing a process that previously required hours of manual research across historical bookings and our experience catalog. The new tech solution also intelligently combines services based on historical booking patterns and our catalog, automating repetitive tasks while preserving consistency and quality”. Consequently, he adds, their own global teams spend less time assembling itineraries and more time advising clients personally, fine-tuning proposals, and creating exceptional travel experiences.
Filippo Torriani, Queen of Clubs' CEO
In addition to this, says Frusci-Virgilio, they have added a few different but necessary features. After all, they know every travel advisor has their own workflow, thus the need to accommodate everyone as efficiently as possible within Queen of Clubs' new platform. “Our standard feature offers a ‘Yes/No’ option where the travel advisor or their client can choose the options of what they wish to confirm, and click to submit the proposal. Pricing is then itemised and outlines a bottom line price. When you click No, then it will automatically reflect in the total price. If an advisor, however, doesn’t want to show their clients itemised pricing or any pricing at all, then we have a second ‘Traveller Proposal’ feature, which is exactly the same as the first proposal but without any prices. The advisor can be on the phone with their client, walking through the itinerary, quickly doing the math, and choosing on behalf of their client. It automatically updates in our system using the cloud technology,” she illustrates.
Moreover, their final itineraries can also include attachments for tickets, vouchers, tipping guides, plus weather, maps and much more - all updated in real time! Advisors, she says, can easily upload this to either their digital AXUS platform or create a PDF instead. These particular features were always ‘mandatory’ to include, in a sense, based on their advisor feedback. That said, the cloud remains the best option so nothing is lost.
Moreover, their final itineraries can also include attachments for tickets, vouchers, tipping guides, plus weather, maps and much more - all updated in real time! Advisors, she says, can easily upload this to either their digital AXUS platform or create a PDF instead. These particular features were always ‘mandatory’ to include, in a sense, based on their advisor feedback. That said, the cloud remains the best option so nothing is lost.
Jennifer Frusci-Virgilio, Managing Partner
Another standout features of Queen of Clubs’ technology is the ability to create engaging, visual, white-labelled proposals. Evidently, presentation is an integral part of winning over ultra luxury travel clients, and their solution revolves around this very fact too. As the duo explains, their tech is based on a new technology called PWA (web applications built using technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript providing a fast and reliable user experience like that of a platform-specific app). Briefly, says Torriani, no more documents or attachments need to be sent back and forth. There’s also no more offline information, and instead, proposals and itineraries are all in the cloud, available and live at all times.
“Clients are spending money on their trip. It’s important for proposals to look beautiful and elegant, to meet the high quality of the five star hotel they are staying in. It should start from the beginning. And white label is important as we are B2B, so our travel advisors should feel confident that they are our client, and we want their client to be WOWED by them and their overall trip experience,” explains Frusci-Virgilio.
“Clients are spending money on their trip. It’s important for proposals to look beautiful and elegant, to meet the high quality of the five star hotel they are staying in. It should start from the beginning. And white label is important as we are B2B, so our travel advisors should feel confident that they are our client, and we want their client to be WOWED by them and their overall trip experience,” explains Frusci-Virgilio.
Exclusive villa experiences with Queen of Clubs
Luxury on the Thames, signed by the firm
Beyond proposal aesthetics, both Torriani and Frusci-Virgilio are seeing many other measurable improvements in efficiency and overall client experience. “Since our new communication is reflected in the cloud, we have nearly eliminated human mistakes while amendments were not updated accordingly. Now the office, the designer, the suppliers, the collaborators, the advisor and traveller are all sharing the same information and itinerary program,” the CEO shares.
Frusci-Virgilio is then quick to add that, with this cloud-itinerary system, their evolution is truly facing forward. “Clients and Advisors experience it from the very first point of contact with us: from our beautiful, bespoke presentations and proposals that we send, all the way through to the final itinerary. It’s a full start to finish experience designed to exude the same luxury, elegance and attention to detail throughout, so that the quality of what clients feel working with us matches the quality of what they experience on the ground. And, because it’s linked to our back office and the cloud, our team can deliver faster, and more precisely, while still taking the time to really tailor and elevate the experience, which is our company theme,” she explains.
Essentially, the firm's Partner insists, it’s a faster and highly sophisticated method and software: “It’s new and exciting, and the clients want to see something beautiful when they are planning their trip from the very beginning. Advisors have been asking for this forever, and them and their clients deserve it. We have had Travel Advisors say that they may not work with us in every destination right now, but will switch because of the tech. They also love that a multi-country option is all in one place now and not disjointed. This is a huge benefit as we are in so many destinations with a wide array of services, and no other DMC can really deliver like this”.
Frusci-Virgilio is then quick to add that, with this cloud-itinerary system, their evolution is truly facing forward. “Clients and Advisors experience it from the very first point of contact with us: from our beautiful, bespoke presentations and proposals that we send, all the way through to the final itinerary. It’s a full start to finish experience designed to exude the same luxury, elegance and attention to detail throughout, so that the quality of what clients feel working with us matches the quality of what they experience on the ground. And, because it’s linked to our back office and the cloud, our team can deliver faster, and more precisely, while still taking the time to really tailor and elevate the experience, which is our company theme,” she explains.
Essentially, the firm's Partner insists, it’s a faster and highly sophisticated method and software: “It’s new and exciting, and the clients want to see something beautiful when they are planning their trip from the very beginning. Advisors have been asking for this forever, and them and their clients deserve it. We have had Travel Advisors say that they may not work with us in every destination right now, but will switch because of the tech. They also love that a multi-country option is all in one place now and not disjointed. This is a huge benefit as we are in so many destinations with a wide array of services, and no other DMC can really deliver like this”.
Surely, developing their own technology in-house has been a significant investment, but one with tremendous value too. Much of the software has been shaped by feedback they deemed interesting or key from their own travel network and partners. As Torriani points out, their sales ambassadors constantly check in with loyal advisors to hear their point of view, needs and suggestions closely. “We always start our projects by focusing on the opposite angle, which is the traveller's’ and advisors’ needs, ultimately to create something that helps the industry work faster and be more efficient,” he says.
Queen of Clubs operates with their own ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Simply put, the company works as a living, human body: everything is connected. Usually, different departments act like independent limbs. Without a shared system, Finance doesn’t know what Marketing is doing. ERP works as the company’s central nervous system and brain, connecting every department to one unified database. When one department takes action, the ‘brain’ instantly tells the rest of the body, allowing the entire company to move in harmony.
This method is stellar, but it meant developing their new software and platform would prove a little more challenging. The first step had to be a full refactoring of their code (300,000 lines of code)! This alone took nine months and six engineers. Next came the creation of a new, more modern framework, only to later work with the design of the platform, and finally the full integration of their ERP and new AI features. These latter ones, he adds, “Are meant to speed up all manual processes and repetitive tasks, ensuring more secure quality control throughout the entire process”.
Altogether, the solution has been developed internally since 2013 through their tech entity, BeConcierge. As Frusci-Virgilio describes when recalling the entire process, this software has evolved over time, starting behind the scenes with their back office system: “This is something we invested in since the very beginning, and over the last few years in particular, that investment has really paid off. It has strengthened our back office systems and procedures, allowing us to execute more seamlessly on the ground for our clients".
Queen of Clubs operates with their own ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Simply put, the company works as a living, human body: everything is connected. Usually, different departments act like independent limbs. Without a shared system, Finance doesn’t know what Marketing is doing. ERP works as the company’s central nervous system and brain, connecting every department to one unified database. When one department takes action, the ‘brain’ instantly tells the rest of the body, allowing the entire company to move in harmony.
This method is stellar, but it meant developing their new software and platform would prove a little more challenging. The first step had to be a full refactoring of their code (300,000 lines of code)! This alone took nine months and six engineers. Next came the creation of a new, more modern framework, only to later work with the design of the platform, and finally the full integration of their ERP and new AI features. These latter ones, he adds, “Are meant to speed up all manual processes and repetitive tasks, ensuring more secure quality control throughout the entire process”.
Altogether, the solution has been developed internally since 2013 through their tech entity, BeConcierge. As Frusci-Virgilio describes when recalling the entire process, this software has evolved over time, starting behind the scenes with their back office system: “This is something we invested in since the very beginning, and over the last few years in particular, that investment has really paid off. It has strengthened our back office systems and procedures, allowing us to execute more seamlessly on the ground for our clients".
Ultimately, this software development undoubtedly enables them to scale faster and establish their presence in their current countries while maintaining the same solid and well-tested standards and procedures. User-friendly, interactive, and exquisitely elegant, their tech is shaping the future of this industry rapidly, and looking ahead, we are sure it’s set to evolve in an incredible manner.
Automation, AI and personalisation all fit like a glove into Queen of Clubs’ vision and tech solutions, but the firm is also leading when it comes to preserving the special human touch that’s so key in our travel industry.
“I don’t consider AI to be a threat, but it could absolutely help us be better, more efficient and make les mistakes if we use it the right way. For example, we carefully select our own guides and partners, and build important relationships with them. AI cannot do this for us,” says Frusci-Virgilio.
Meanwhile, Torriani agrees: “Our services will always be customised and tailored to clients' needs. Personal communication with our advisors has always been our focus. Therefore, this business will never be possible without the human touch, which we consider essential”.
www.queenofclubs.com
More on - Filippo Torriani
More on - Jennifer Frusci
Automation, AI and personalisation all fit like a glove into Queen of Clubs’ vision and tech solutions, but the firm is also leading when it comes to preserving the special human touch that’s so key in our travel industry.
“I don’t consider AI to be a threat, but it could absolutely help us be better, more efficient and make les mistakes if we use it the right way. For example, we carefully select our own guides and partners, and build important relationships with them. AI cannot do this for us,” says Frusci-Virgilio.
Meanwhile, Torriani agrees: “Our services will always be customised and tailored to clients' needs. Personal communication with our advisors has always been our focus. Therefore, this business will never be possible without the human touch, which we consider essential”.
www.queenofclubs.com
More on - Filippo Torriani
More on - Jennifer Frusci
Zoila Checa
