Blah blah! There's a buzz in the air around Panama... yada yada... downtown glamour... booming economy.... puke, Sandra Snyder... glittering skyscrapers... money laundering haven ...a natural candidate and the next best market for the outstanding service, insider knowledge and exclusive access that Quintessentially can provide. Quintessentially Panama will launch with a tropical party – the first of its kind – in early 2008.

The party was yesterday, sponsored by the McTrump condo flippers club. Quintessentially is a sort of Club Union for foreign yuppies and snobs with too much money and not enough brains to know what to do with it.

They promise to "satisfy any last-minute requests, from front row seats at fashion shows and spur of the moment chartered yachts, to impossible-to-book theatre tickets or dinner reservations. The benefits of a Quintessentially membership are endless: members receive automatic access and exclusive privileges at the finest gyms, spas, restaurants and nightclubs around the globe. Our travel department is also a fountain of globe-trotting knowledge."

Yeah. So is the internet.

They don't publish their fees, but someone in the know told us that it's $2000 per year and then you have some sort of glorified magazine subscription. A bit of web research led us to this site where happy clients voice their opinion:

Quintessentially sucks. Staff were not professional and kept bluffing about their connections. I will not renew my membership.

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Quintessentially terrible. Poor service and very rude staff. A real shame.

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I have been a member now for 4 years but will not be renewing my membership. They take forever to get back on requests and in some cases just forgot. The service is non-existant and they certainly cannot perform miracles - if hotels or restaurants are booked up they cannot find spaces (as they claim they can). They will offer alternatives, but if I wanted somewhere different I would have asked. In fact, the internet actually does better, both on price and availability, and it's instant too.

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You ask them to do something, it takes a zillion years for them to get back. I asked for a couple of football tickets abroad; they couldn't come up with the goods after searching for two weeks but a week later I found them myself online. I asked them for a few restaurants and nightclubs in Denmark; they sent me information from a random website which they copied and pasted into an e-mail. I booked Marriott London through Quintessentially; rather than being upgraded I was given the worst room ever - the hotel didn't even know what Quintessentially was about!

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Recently joined this outfit and have yet to understand why I pay the membership fee. Anyone these days can get in on a club guest list if you call them in advance, and restaurant bookings surely we can organise ourselves. Went to a Quintessentially members' party in London and have never seen such a collection of wannabe celebrity desperado name-droppers (guests and 'Q' staff alike).

Our spies told us that they're negotiating advertising on Panama's premier pimp-a-scam website, the Panama Guide. Class act, huh?

Oh, they also write that "24 hours a day and 365 days a year, our experts are on hand". Not true. We sent them an email with some questions and never received a reply. Too busy partying, we suppose.