News for the Hospitality Executive |
by
Steven Ferry
January 2011 Why
have butler service in
a hotel? In the cases canvassed, there were two basic reasons: either
because
the hotel owners conceived they had the best property in the world/on
the PGA
tour/etc. and they believed the corollary on the service side could
only be
supplied by the addition of butlers. Or because they wanted to give
their most
important guests such a level of service. The
five hotels participating in this article have
provided guests with
this butler service for the last 6-16 years, building the desired
reputation
and reaping the rewards. Contrasting this with hotels that have signed
onto the
butler concept and then disbanded the service, it is obvious that
butler
departments are not always guaranteed success. How
did they do it, those
who succeeded? Ongoing challenges have related, for Burj al Arab, to their
butlers
leaving after two years—not because of dissatisfaction, but because,
having
worked at the hotel, they became valued commodities in the West, as
well as
their home countries. The solution was hiring mature butlers,
providing better pay and living conditions, allowing the butlers to
multi-task,
and of course, promoting internally so there was a career path worth
pursuing. At Harrah’s, lack of consistency was resolved by having
pictures of
each set-up, from morning breakfast to elaborate dinner tables and
everything
in between. Similarly, the other hotels found they needed to continue
the focus on
training in order to maintain standards. In the case of Falling Rock,
the
initial training was sufficiently strong and effective that they were
able to
continue annual training in-house. Their ongoing challenges have been
“the
stress of striving for our 5th star so we can be one of the
top 25
resort hotels in the world [they achieved 5 Diamond from AAA soon after
opening
and have maintained it since, and have been awarded 4 Star the last two
years
by Forbes/Mobil], and keeping the team motivated during incredible busy
times.”
Team-building and venting sessions have apparently helped keep the team
motivated. What’s So
Special About Butler Service? Given
that butler service is superior, and that part of it can be attributed
to the
attitude/mindset and communication skills of the butler, what do
butlers
actually do en suite to service guests. The key is actually in the
phrase “en
suite,” because that is the niche that hotel butlers open up for hotels
as
lines of service to guests. Until butlers arrived on the scene in
hotels three
decades ago, there was very little hotels could do for guests in their
suite,
other than clean them, provide amenities occasionally, and room
service. Those
hotels who have successful butler service list the following actions
they can
perform to wow their guests or merely make their stay more
fun/convenient/pleasurable/tailor
made to their needs, etc. Preparing
the suite for arrivals, welcoming with a beverage and hot/chilled
towelette; touring
the guest; unpacking (and later packing) their suitcases so they can go
about
their business or vacation straight away; concierge service and being a
continue source of information during the stay; helping with IT and
business/personal secretary requests; running a bath, usually with all
sorts of
trimmings from caviar and champagne to less exotic fare; checking-in
and –out;
promoting hotel facilities (and upselling); wardrobe management,
laundry,
pressing and shoe shine (Falling Rock provides golf spike detailing!);
providing room amenities; replenishing the private bar; providing
F&B
functions from simple food delivery to serving and clearing
multi-course meals
(in larger suites) and organizing and managing a wide range of parties;
escorting to any and
all
appointments on-and off-property; personal shopping and personal assistance; wake-up service; and most
importantly, anticipating guest
needs or dealing with their requests if not anticipated. There
are other
services that can be delivered, but none of the five hotels questioned
offer
them. Compare this to hotels without butler
service, where
one checks into an empty room and talks through the phone to front
desk, and
occasionally has food delivered: traveling is a lonely business, so
butlers
putting the mansion-away-from-the-mansion back into the equation
certainly adds
value to a hotel’s offering. Think orchestrating wedding proposals;
floating-gazebo dinners;
tracking down long-lost relatives and arranging the reunion; training a
guest
on sabering a champagne bottle so he could impress his fiancee;
replicating
elements of a guest’s home in their suite; the more mundane five-hour
drives to
deliver lost items and smoothly handling medical emergencies—these are
the
above-and-beyond the normal hotel stay that butlers make possible. Which is probably why guests tend to rave
about
their experience at these hotels, with “nearly 100% exceptional feedback from our
guests,”
as one GM raved in turn, and comments like “the best service they have received in
all their
travels,” as one head butler reports. The media have similarly trumpeted the
wonders of
these hotels and their butler service: Butlers, like Rolls Royces and
Bentleys,
super-yachts and private jets, symbolize the ultimate in the striving
for and
enjoyment of superior service, possessions, and lifestyles. They
contain
several of the ingredients that the press typically salivates over. The one fly in the ointment for butlers
is that
mystery-guest-certifying organizations like Forbes/Mobil, AA, AAA, RAC,
Leading
Hotels of the World have yet to catch up with the phenomenon of
butlers, even
though they exist with a wide range of service offerings in something
like 400
hotels around the world. As one representative explained to the author
in
Spring of 2010, they do not want to penalize hotels without butler
service by
having butler criteria. There is an easy way to resolve this, using the
criteria established by the International Institute of Modern Butlers
and
offered freely to these organizations to incorporate into their own
where
butler service is offered. Butler service is the way of the future in a
world
where even the wealthy (and why not) are demanding maximum bang for
their buck—service
levels to justify the high rack rates demanded in luxury hotels. And by
the
way, with various hotels straining beyond the five-star rating in an
effort to
reflect the service they actually do deliver, it might be time to come
up with
6-star and maybe even 7-star ratings to reflect hotels and resorts with
butler
services, private infinity pools, and so forth. Which brings up another point, while on
the subject
of these organizations: the ratings have become sufficiently confusing
between
competing systems in a global environment—and with knock-offs and
self-assignments occurring—that the ratings have lost meaning or
usefulness to
the consumer in some part. One whole country (which shall remain
anonymous)
adds two stars to their actual level as a marketing gimmick. At the
International Hotel Conference held in Venice during October, 2010,
panelists
referred to hotels by such terms as luxury,
upscale, mid-upscale etc., in their attempts to define hotels. It’s
off-subject for this article, but worth exploring and resolving,
perhaps, as we
move increasingly into a global marketplace. Other benefits of butlers in these hotels
are the
ability to personalize service based on an ever-accumulating database
of guest
preferences (a long-standing butler tool), provide a single point of
contact
for guests who takes ownership of any problems and removes worry and
chores
from the guest experience; and the development of a relationship that
encourages repeat visits, with guests requesting the same butler. Butler service has justified high or
higher rack
rates in these hotels (at a time when occupancy is up and profits and
rev par
down in the rest of the country, Falling Rock has enjoyed increased rack rates 5 out
of the 6 years since they opened). The number one reason guests at Burj
al Arab
return is because of their butler service. Burj al Arab enjoys 35% repeat guests,
Seven Stars
Galleria and Falling Rock experience 40%. Internal Perceptions Not to paint butlers as super heroes,
they are
generally simply dedicated and service-oriented individuals, but is
that how
other employees view them? Not in all hotels, for sure, where the butlers didn’t get
what a butler
really is and so earned the opprobrium (harsh criticism or censure) of their colleagues. Possible
conflicts and areas
of jealousy were avoided in these
hotels, however, by understanding that this new beast, the butler, was
an
unknown quantity in hospitality, a recent entrant. So efforts were made
to increase
the understanding of the other departments of what a butler is, why
they are of
value to the hotel and thus to all its employees, and, also how they
enhance,
not cut across, staff income streams. In additino to meetings and
briefings, two hotels employed cross-exposure/training to increase
understanding and so acceptance. The result has been respect,
mutual respect and the building
of long-term relationships that add up to real teamwork and thus excellent service. One hotel among
these five, however, is fighting an uphill battle— probably because
they did
not start off on the right foot—finding it difficult to make other
departments
accept their role in servicing guests. Their current effort to salvage
the
situation is to be as helpful as possibile to other departments in
their
servicing of guests. From the
management side, a
GM who recognizes the value of butlers says: “the butler profession will continue to
grow in the
coming years. However, a butler staff is definitely a huge investment:
wage
scales increase, training is a huge investment, and amenities normally
increase
in cost when a butler program is implemented” Where do Butlers Belong? The hotels participating all agreed that all five
star/diamond hotels
needed to offer butler service if they expect to provide top-level
service; one
even suggested that some four-star hotels should also offer butler
service.
Why? The wow factor and what it does for word of mouth, repeat visits,
occupancy, rev par, and the bottom line. Republished with permission of the author and hotelexecutive.com As Founder and Chairman of
the International Institute of Modern Butlers, Steven Ferry campaigns
to raise
service standards around the world by passing on the finely honed
social and
service skills of the British butler. He speaks and writes for the
industry,
and his two books on the profession, Butlers
and Household Managers, 21st Century Professionals, and Hotel
Butlers, The Great Service
Differentiators, are used as the definitive texts for butlers and
their
employers world wide. In addition to guiding the Institute, Mr. Ferry
spends
much of his time in the field, teaching butlers and household managers
in the
private and hospitality sectors. |
Contact:
Mr. Steven Ferry |
Also See: | Green
Hotels, Butler Service: Oxymoronic, or Two Sides of the Same Coin?
/ Steven Ferry / October 2010 |
A Hospitality Butler With a Political Statment to Make (At Least Until Butler Programs are Re-instated / Beefed Up Again) / Steven Ferry / April 2009 |