A hotel butler is the member of the rooms division assigned to a particular guest or suite for the length of a stay. Where a front desk agent or a concierge serves whoever approaches, the butler serves one party, from the welcome at the door to the last bag out, and handles whatever that party needs inside the room and much of what they need beyond it. At the properties in my books the butler is also the person a regular guest comes to know by name, which is why the role matters so much to loyalty.
A word about the material. None of the eighty people I interviewed was working as a butler when we spoke. Everyone who speaks about the role below was a general manager or a company president, describing butler teams they had built or inherited. The picture that follows is therefore the view from the top of the house, and I have kept it to what those leaders actually said.
A day in the role at the highest level
The hoteliers mention the butler in two settings. The first is the villa or suite, where the role is part of the physical offer. Amit Majumder, then general manager of Jumeirah Vittaveli in the Maldives, listed twenty four hour butler service alongside the private pools and open bathrooms as what the resort coupled with its villas. Ralph Radtke, then general manager of Çırağan Palace Kempinski in Istanbul, described twelve types of olive oil soap sliced in front of the guest by their butler. In that setting the day is built around arrival, unpacking, the small ceremonies of the room, and the dozens of requests that come between.
The second setting is the phone. Marc C. Brugger, then general manager of Rosewood Beijing, ran what he called an e butler service, a text channel through which guests could reach the butler team wherever they were in the city. Krister Svensson, then general manager of The St. Regis Bangkok, moved the same idea onto WhatsApp because, as he told me, guests were much more comfortable texting than calling. In The Luxury of Attention I describe this as the pocket concierge model: a real person at the other end of the message, with the property’s knowledge and connections, available at any hour. The butler on a text channel spends part of the day answering questions about a city the guest does not know, which is a different rhythm from the suite but the same job of being the one familiar point of contact.
Brian Gullbrants, then president of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, put the standard plainly. His butler teams worked around the clock for the most demanding, well travelled guests on the planet. Axel Bethke, then general manager of Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara, remembered butler service as one of the things that once made a five-star stay special in itself, in the same breath as afternoon tea and pillow menus. His point was that the game has changed and that these offerings are now expected. The butler is no longer a novelty. The role is judged on what it does with the access it has.
What the people in the book say
The story that best shows what the role can become belongs to Ayman Gharib, then general manager of Raffles Dubai and Sofitel Dubai Wafi, whose regular guest was about to make a first visit to another Raffles property overseas.
“To surprise him and his family, we flew his regular butler to the hotel so that when they all arrived, our colleague would be waiting to welcome them to their room and take care of them during their stay.” Ayman Gharib, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)
The guest had not asked for this and had not imagined it was possible. In the book I use it as the clearest example of the fourth rung of the Anticipation Ladder, the moment a property creates an experience the guest did not know to want. It cost a plane ticket. The relationship that made it possible is the thing Gharib was describing a few pages earlier.
“In fact, repeat guests who have developed longstanding relationships with their butler, shisha sommelier, or spa therapist will often contact them directly to arrange their next stay.” Ayman Gharib, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)
Brugger described what the text channel feels like from the guest’s side.
“Beijing is a huge city and it is easy to get lost or confused; having that link to our butler team is like having a personal friend you can rely on at all times.” Marc C. Brugger, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)
The path to it
The books are quiet on how a person becomes a butler, because nobody I interviewed came up that way. What they do show is how the leaders train for it. Peter Hopgood, then general manager of Outrigger Fiji Beach Resort, sent his butlers and fine dining service staff to the Australian Butler School, which tells you that at the top of the market the role is treated as a formal craft with its own schooling rather than a promotion from the floor. Svensson, who is a firm believer in working your way up whether you start in the dining room or the kitchen, is as close as the material comes to a general answer.
The honest guidance, then, is that the butler sits inside the rooms division, that properties invest in dedicated training for it, and that the skills it builds, close attention to one person over days and years, are the same skills the general managers in my books describe as the foundation of everything above them. For the longer view, see the question on how to build a long career in hospitality and the question on how to become a hotel general manager.
What it asks of you
The role asks for memory, since the relationships Gharib describes are built from remembering what a guest wanted last time without being told again. It asks for discretion, because the butler is inside the guest’s private space more than anyone else on the property. It asks for comfort with a phone as much as with a tray, now that so much of the contact runs through messages. And it asks for the kind of steadiness that lets a guest in a foreign city feel, as Brugger put it, that they have a friend they can rely on.