‘I remember waking up one Saturday and one of our members wanted to buy a train’ to transport his family across the US, says Peter, the extravagance of the request not seeming to faze him. This is nothing out of the ordinary for the managing director of Knightsbridge Circle, Peter Anderson, who has flown a parrot on a private jet at the request of its owners as well as hand-delivered handbags to Singapore. The fixer-of-fabulous delivers elaborate benefits as part of Knightsbridge Circle’s pre-emptive, imaginative, and proactive service. Beau Monde Traveler catches up with Peter to talk about his career, aspirations, and predictions for the world of luxury travel.

Knightsbridge Circle is a ‘highly bespoke, dedicated and personalised’ travel and lifestyle concierge that offers members-only exclusive services. The idea, says Peter, is that members join for a year at a time during which he and his team provide seamless booking and lifestyle experiences that enable clients to enjoy stress-free and relaxing travel. ‘We take care of every single detail and make sure that you can enjoy that time and really make it worthwhile.’ Peter brings experience from myriad management positions over the past 20 years; he has worked with Viceroy Hotel Group, Relais & Chateaux UK, and Dorchester Collection twice (‘the good ones always return, as they say’) and the logical next step was to move into luxury travel on the agency side, which has ‘presented excellent challenges and has really broadened my experience’, he says.

Peter has been ‘on and off planes constantly’ since the age of two and laughs that he has been through an impressive number of passports. ‘My family have worked in the fruit business for many years and my father’s career took us to the Mediterranean, Cyprus, and later to Miami’. It is no surprise that Peter chose a career path that would allow him to continue his travel streak. However, ‘the thing I really enjoy is building and growing businesses and seeing them bloom’. Peter enjoys how pleasant his clients are, an aspect of his work he was perhaps not expecting; ‘on the whole, they are incredibly nice people, and they’re very grounded considering their success and the fortunes they have’. Given the amount of time he spends with his clients to provide them with such a personalised service, this must be a relief.

In his role as managing director, Peter hopes to ‘grow the business in a very conscious and considered way’ with a focus on prioritising Knightsbridge Circle’s bespoke service. ‘We specifically self-limit so we only have 50 families in each office’, he explains, meaning that they can then establish a long-term relationship with clients through personal connections. When Peter is in the US, he ‘travels up and down the East Coast meeting with members’ even if it’s just for a coffee or – for those who are especially busy – a quick chat as ‘they’re checking into a hotel or jumping onto their private jet’. Even if he can only grab a client for five minutes, seeing them face-to-face is of the utmost importance. ‘We can glean so much more information from somebody about how we can deliver our bespoke service in five minutes in person than we can in 500 emails; how they react to a comment, their thoughts, their understanding…’. Peter and his team invest their personal time to nurture important personal relationships with clients.

Just as, at any given moment, you’re likely to find Peter liaising in person with a client, the rest of the time he is visiting hotels and any other experiences he might be offering to clients to ensure they are up to standard. ‘Maybe the last time a member stayed at one hotel was six years ago, and they loved it at the time, but it hasn’t been renovated since and is looking a bit tired. We have to make sure our knowledge is as up-to-date and current as it possibly can be.’ He explains that the only way ‘we can really be the experts that we are is by getting out there and experiencing the products ourselves’. This way, Peter can accurately match his clients with an experience tailored to their tastes and interests.

Knightsbridge Circle prides itself on its pre-emptive, imaginative, and proactive service: ‘We get to know our members incredibly well’. Peter explains that he knows not just the birthdays and anniversaries of his clients but ‘when their children’s birthdays are, what pillows they prefer in a hotel, their favourite wines…’. Many of his clients tend to follow patterns and Peter ensures that he knows the ins and outs of their habits so that he can pre-empt their needs. ‘For example, we have one gentleman who travels to London a lot. We know what time he likes his massage on a Saturday and where he likes to have it. We know when he likes to play golf and we know the type of restaurants that he likes.’ Knightsbridge Circle can book activities for their clients in advance such as dinner reservations for each night of a stay and then simply ask, ‘Which ones would you like to keep, and which ones would you like to cancel?’ As for the imaginative side of things, the aforementioned client also happened to be travelling with his daughter on his trip to London. Peter knows she is a big Peppa Pig fan and set up a ‘meet-and-greet’ experience with the beloved character that blew the family away. ‘Obviously with all these things you keep the parents happy, and you keep the kids happy. It works beautifully.’ 

Peter is keen not only on pre-empting his clients’ needs but also on keeping an eye on future trends in the luxury travel industry. ‘I see a lot more of something coined quite recently, which is quiet luxury, things that are real quality.’ He explains that while there will always be a place for extravagant holidays, more and more Knightsbridge Circle members are ‘looking for really beautiful, curated experiences that are less flashy’. Peter speaks about his predicted impact of Chat GPT and tech-focused approaches on the travel industry, especially agents and curators. ‘What we do is so subtle and nuanced’ that he believes nothing could quite replace their service. Of course, travellers can book their holidays through online agents and while this method is effective for budget and even mid-range trips, an algorithm does not live up to the value of real-life travel curators, especially for luxury holidays and events for which Peter predicts ‘a real focus on the travel experts’.

Despite his demanding career, Peter sometimes has time for trips of his own. ‘Having lived in Miami, I love going back. When I lived there, I never really got to have the full Miami Beach lifestyle’ but has since rectified that with a trip to the Four Seasons, Surfside, where he was able to jog along the boardwalk in the morning and stroll to local restaurants: ‘it’s just so special’. The avid traveller has also recently returned from a family trip to Marrakesh. Peter speaks highly of the Beldi Country Club, a ‘beautiful property’, at which ‘we had a wonderful time’. Most noteworthy were the expansive gardens that ‘were almost too big’, he jokes. Peter teases that ‘we lost the children a couple of times in the hotel gardens, but we found them again. Thankfully they’re not still in Marrakesh.’

When discussing his favourite London restaurants, Peter doesn’t hesitate before explaining that ‘I have to stay true to my Dorchester heritage. During the summer, the sun is shining and you’re sitting at their rooftop restaurant overlooking Hyde Park. It’s absolutely stunning… a very, very special place.’ However, he would also recommend dining at Socca in Mayfair or Mayha in Marylebone, which is a welcome addition to the London restaurant scene as ‘our members love Japanese dining, and there weren’t that many great options in London for a long time’. An exciting and unique experience that Peter often recommends ‘is the Sir John Soane’s Museum in the City, which has an incredible collection of sculptures and all sorts of artefacts. Generally in winter, they do a candlelit tour of the museum and it’s almost like you’re going back in time. It’s such a special experience.’ Peter also shares his favourite hotels in the world: at the top of the list is Le Meurice in Paris. The property – as well as a convenient proximity to local restaurants and the Louvre – boasts stunning views over the ‘Tuileries Gardens and, especially in the summer, beautiful gardens and then you’ve got the Eiffel Tower in the distance’. He can’t wait to go back. Equally, the Hotel Eden in Rome and The Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur are up there for revisits.

Under Peter’s direction, Knightsbridge Circle is blooming as he hoped it would. Its integral cornerstones of being pre-emptive, imaginative, and proactive clearly set the service apart from its competitors and sustain repeat clients (and a host of new ones); the personal relationships fostered between staff and clients are remarkable. It is unlikely that any luxury travel concierge service rivals this unique element of service, which – unlike the increasing popularity of tech-focused booking services – pre-empts clients’ needs to such a high degree. It looks like Peter Anderson is taking Knightsbridge Circle and its clients in the right direction.