As a part-time butler/PA, and international Butler trainer, everywhere I travel, I’m always on the lookout for good butler-service.

Who can tell me where to find it? As the environment is always so great, I also want the guests to be able to enjoy this to the full. A perfect personalised service with eye for detail, should complement a perfect luxurious environment.

My curiosity combined with my passion for service is sometimes received with mixed feeling by the hotels I stay at.

My only objective however, is to enhance their service and awareness to their guests, me being ‘just’ one of them. Why are managers so reluctant to discuss their performance? Are they just happy with their current performance?

Hardships all over the world, competition tough: will the guest still be able to enjoy the ‘luxury’ of butler service? I sure hope so!

From my point of view, especially now it is a vital added value in luxury hotels. Where life is more challenging all over, it is up to the butlers to balance this with personal attention and a comfortable personalised environment. That is the passion of a good butler and that is where luxury hotels can make that difference to the guest.

A while ago, I wrote an article on the telephone being the hidden entrance to your hotel - 

Now, the question is: what is happening at your real entrance? Do you ever consider this? Do you regularly sit in a chair, near the entrance, just observing what is really going on there? Or opening that door for the guest yourself once in an while?

In the hospitality the importance of the physical front door has been acknowledged all right -

This is why in many hotels you so often see staff polishing the, almost by standard, glass doors all day long. They should look perfect! And so does the doorman, or least he should. Luckily not very often do they look shabby. But once in a while before a 5-star hotel, there is this doorman in a wrinkled uniform. It tells you so much about the hotel.