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The rise of hotel butler service
You rang? The latest travel must — personal butlers to go
 | Sandals Resorts took a big leap into the lap of luxury with its introduction of Sandals Butlers. Servicing the top-category suites in Sandals’ Antigua, Bahamas, Jamaica and St. Lucia properties, the butlers manage private in-suite check-ins, pack and unpack clothing, prepare scented bubble baths and even orchestrate gourmet dining on a suite’s private terrace. |
Sandals & Beaches Resorts |
“American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers,” said W. Somerset Maugham, famed playwright and novelist.
Memo to Somerset: The fad has spread.
Nowadays, it seems, well-heeled travelers of every nationality are seeking just the sort of perfect service in their hotel suites and cruise ship cabins that only a butler can provide. From Tokyo to Dubai, from Miami’s South Beach to London—and, seemingly, on every swanky ship that plies the high seas—a wave of butlers is on the elegant march.
“Butler service is definitely a growing trend, especially in top five-star hotels and resorts,” says Khun Chomphunuch Thongkham, guest relations manager at the Mandarin Oriental Dhara Dhevi resort in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Indeed, butlers at Thongkham’s resort are constantly on call, whether to pack and unpack suitcases, make restaurant reservations, fix stubborn Internet connections or simply prepare Jacuzzi baths.
The exact functions that these professional pamperers provide differ from property to property; but, generally, the job of the butler is to centralize the many functions of a hotel or cruise ship in the body of one resourceful, always available person. To that end, the butler is the equivalent of one-stop-shopping—the go-to guy for requests both large and small. Tell your butler to do it and you don’t have to ask again.
How do butlers differ from other service people guests might encounter like cabin stewards, for example?
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It’s not that guests can’t make their own reservations or book their own tours; rather, it’s that luxury hotel and cruise patrons paying top dollar simply want to minimize hassles. Why worry about busy signals or lines at the concierge desk when you can just summon your butler and have him do all that arranging—and waiting—for you?
Of course, butlers do more than just stand and wait. On one Silversea cruise to Venice, a couple staying in a Grand Suite wished to take a private plane into the Alps, do some skiing and then be back on board before the ship sailed. Planning the excursion was the couple’s job, but it was the butler who coordinated all the arrangements with the concierge and shore excursion desk.
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Kor Hotel Group / Tides South Beach Hotel Butlers by any other name, the “Personal Assistants” at the newly redesigned Tides South Beach hotel will get your clothes dry-cleaned, walk your dog, shine your shoes, serve you dinner and even arrange for a DVD to be delivered to your room. They’ll also organize a yacht charter on two hours notice, or see to it that an exclusive boutique is closed to the public so that V.I.P.'s can shop discreetly. |
While butler service is always expanding, it is also changing in character. These days, butlers must still perform all the roles of the traditional butler without seeming too, well, butler-ish.
“Traditional butler service has been revived and reinvented in a less starched and stiff manner,” explains Shan Kanagasingham, general manager at the Tides South Beach in Miami (where butlers are called “Personal Assistants”). “But they still have the utmost commitment to going above and beyond the call of duty.”
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