Indeed, even HNWIs (High Net Worth Individuals), those 1% of the population with everything they could ever dream of materially, need help to find ‘the one’ or ‘the one’.<\/p>\n
Interviews with this expert matchmaker, collected and translated by Charlotte Boutboul<\/em><\/p>\n LUXSURE: How do you explain this almost universal increase in the number of singles? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Inga Verbeeck:<\/em><\/strong> To begin with, the divorce rate continues to rise significantly. Today, 60% of Western Europeans are divorced. Also, many people prefer to wait before settling down and getting married. As a result, many give priority to their careers and become inundated with work… They have more deadlines set and this becomes stressful. Basically, they have less time because of their stressful pace of life. <\/p>\n For some, the online dating industry is contributing to this increase rather than reducing it? What do you think? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I think that’s partly true. Many rely on these sites and other tools to find someone. The world is becoming a less sociable place. You know, I’ve always traveled a lot for work and you can really see the difference on the plane: 15 years ago people talked to each other easily; not necessarily romantically, but there was more social contact. I think today we live in a different world where people are more isolated. Random contact with those around us occurs less frequently. People are afraid for security reasons, not to be cheated… They are more conscientious and more afraid. All this contributes to the fact that we no longer want to get in touch with people we don’t know, instead favoring virtual contact on websites. But in reality, this isn’t really a viable long-term solution. It’s only a solution for finding adventures with no end in sight. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n So you wouldn’t recommend dating sites at all? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n For some it works, but to find something serious I wouldn’t count on it. I’d recommend more personal orientation coaching or reinventing your social life. After all, that’s possible too. There are no miracle solutions, just tools to create more opportunities, that’s what it’s all about: more opportunities or better selected opportunities. The only thing that online dating services can succeed in doing, each in their own way, is creating unavailable opportunities in your daily life beyond your professional environment and social circles. I’m not saying that people don’t have lives, but that everyone has a limited life by definition. Everyone only has a certain amount of time to dedicate to others each day. These tools therefore create opportunities, and the question you have to ask yourself is which tool works best for your personal desires. Dating is like looking for a needle in a haystack. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n So how does your service stand out in the industry? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n For us, it’s different because we have a very high success rate (75%), but that doesn’t mean we can guarantee you love. We owe our high success rate to the fact that we’ve chosen to operate in a very specific niche of the industry. We offer a service that allows us to be very selective. Your chances of finding someone through us are greater because we’ve filtered out so many practical details for you. We filter life philosophy, life goals, whether you want children or not, whether you like the city or the country, lots of practical and important things for everyday life. And since we work for a niche of a certain level, we can bring together very similar people who share the same vision of things, so logically the chances of affinity and falling in love are higher. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n How do you operate in practice? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n We have a website, but we don’t operate through it – it only exists as a presentation. We operate through individual consultation. Let’s say you’re interested and ask for information, then we’ll arrange a 3-hour meeting to get to know you better, and if we’re comfortable working together, we’ll register you. The registration fee is 10,000 euros for life, plus an annual membership fee that can vary between 5,000 and 35,000 euros depending on geography. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meaning? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n If we only operate in one country, such as France, the fee is 5,000 euros, but if you’re looking for someone internationally the fee goes up. Many of our clients are based in Hong Kong or Bangkok, for example, but are European and have a business in the USA…These clients are open to meeting anywhere as long as the person is the right one, but for us this requires more work as it involves filtering and selecting more people. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Do you use algorithms and the like in your searches and filtering? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n No. We’ve even withdrawn our psychoanalysis questionnaires. We do practical screening first, and then use our human knowledge to be pragmatic and intuitive in our approach. It’s people matching people. <\/em> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n You know, we generally spend between 5 and 6 hours with a customer before activating their registration. These hours already allow us to learn a lot about the person: how they are, their weaknesses, their strengths, how they behave in certain situations, how their past has unfolded, what they want to change for their future, what they hope to achieve and how they’d like to live… All this information goes into a schematic analysis of each profile, but we don’t use this information algorithmically. We also carry out a security check on our future customers for more practical purposes. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meaning?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n We work with external companies that track our customers’ passports. They have access to databases and send us a report on the customer. This doesn’t mean we know everything about the customer, but we do know if they have a criminal past. It’s a security procedure that guarantees us a safe environment. This and the other information gathered gives us a really good idea of who the customer is. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let’s say I’m one of your customers and you’ve found someone who’s right for me. How will you notify me? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you’re a member and we’ve selected someone for you, we’ll start by sending you an e-mail with a basic description of the person, then we’ll always call back to explain why we’ve chosen that person and provide more description. We describe in detail, but never provide photos<\/strong>. We know our customers, what they like, what attracts them. Our job is to take that into account, of course, but photos make me think too much of a meat display. It’s the ‘package’ that counts and will determine whether you’re interested or not. I can show you beautiful photos of people you’d never look at in the street because they don’t really give off anything extraordinary, just as I can show you uninteresting photos of people who are incredible in person. People focus too much on photos and tend to over-analyze them. We prefer to maintain the natural flow of simply meeting someone. Our customers have to trust us. Nevertheless, we always provide a description beforehand, and the customer always has a choice – he can say no. If the appointment doesn’t meet expectations, there’s a follow-up that allows us to learn more about the person and better redirect our research. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some people are very open and reveal their reactions and preferences very quickly, while for others it takes us longer to understand what the person likes and what provokes their reactions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So what’s important is that we make an appointment with faith. We’ll never present several profiles at once.<\/strong> It’s the same reasoning as for the photos: we don’t want to present things like in a catalog: ‘here’s a selection, make your choice’ – that’s not how we play the game. We do our duty very diligently, and when we present someone to you, it’s for a reason. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Screen-Shot-2015-08-06-at-12.00.09-300x180.png\")
<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Screen-Shot-2015-08-06-at-11.58.48-300x136.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Screen-Shot-2015-08-06-at-11.58.31-300x108.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Screen-Shot-2015-08-06-at-11.59.41-300x190.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n