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The Butler Did It


I remember the first time Janet and I booked accommodations that came with butler service. It was a cruise, and we booked a butler suite because we wanted more space. The butler was just this extra thing that came along with the room, kind of like the “Do Not Remove” tag that comes on pillows. What do you do with it?


I am not a high maintenance traveler. I pack a few hours before leaving the house, I’m not overly picky about flights…though if I’m being honest, I do appreciate an upgrade…and I don’t need someone greeting me with a drink and a cool face towel whenever I get to where I’m going. Yet I found myself coming to appreciate butler service. If you are interested in trying butler service for yourself it helps to know what to expect, but it helps even more to know what not to expect.


When you book butler level accommodations you can expect to be pampered and provided prompt service any time you ask for it. You even get a cell phone that offers a direct line to your butler so you can ask for something whenever they aren’t where you are.


Butler service begins before you arrive at your destination. You’ll fill out a preference sheet that lets your butler know…your preferences. When you get to your room, you’ll find a mini fridge stocked with bottled water and your favorite brands of beer and soda, a bar stocked with your preferred liquor(s), a waiting snack tray with your choice of fruit, canapes, or cheeses, and you’ll have nightly dinner reservations at your choice of restaurant and time.


Butler service gets you expedited check-in, usually in an exclusive butler only check-in lounge. Considering the short amount of time you’ll spend in that lounge it may not seem like a big deal. It is. You’ll appreciate how big of a deal it is when you see what the main lobby looks like after a shuttle bus full of new arrivals pulls up to the Porte-cochère or the cruise terminal.


After you are checked in, you’ll get an escort to your room. Sometimes the escort will be your butler and sometimes it will be another member of the staff. If the latter, your butler will come by your room shortly after you arrive.  The escort is a nice touch after you’ve spent the day traveling and just want to get to your room, kick your feet up and raid the mini fridge rather than traipsing around in search of your room, or in search of a bar if your flight was really rough.


The first thing the butler will do when they arrive at your room, and they’ll do it enroute if they are escorting you, is introduce themself and the rest of their team (more on “the team” in a bit). They’ll show you how the room is laid out and explain how all the lighting, A/V, and climate controls work. They’ll give you the butler phone, tell you how to use it, and if you have a good butler, they’ll go over your preference sheet with you. If they don’t, ask.


All of that is nice, but the service butlers provide that we find most valuable is to reserve a place for us on the beach or by the pool for each day of our stay. It allows me to sleep in and then enjoy the made-to-order breakfast my butler delivers to my room at the time I requested.


At the all-inclusive resorts we prefer, when our butler reserves a spot for us on the beach or by the pool they also leave us a cooler filled with bottled water and diet coke packed on ice. The butlers will put whatever you ask for in the cooler…juice, beer, sodas. They would probably even put a bottle of wine or vodka on ice for you if you asked, though they might have to transfer the contents into a non-glass container since glass isn’t allowed on the beach or at the pool. Even though a bar is never more than a few steps away and roving bar staff make the rounds regularly, the cooler is a nice touch.


In addition to delivering breakfast to your room, your butler will deliver lunch to you on the beach or by the pool. Some resorts and cruise ships don’t allow food by the pool and in those cases, you are stuck going to the grill which is usually right next to the pool. In the evening, your butler will escort you to dinner at your preferred restaurant, seat you, and then hand you over to the restaurant’s staff for the meal service. If you are like us and don’t have room for dessert, order it anyway. Your server will call your butler and have it delivered to your room for you to enjoy later.


If you prefer in-room dining, with butler service you aren’t stuck ordering from a limited room service menu like the rest of the guests. You can ask your butler for anything off the menu from any restaurant on the ship or at the resort, and your butler will get it and deliver it to your room…breakfast, lunch and dinner. You don’t get course by course service from your butler, but when we dine in, we don’t want our butler hanging around.


That’s a lot of pampering, mostly reactive…butlers responding to your requests. Butlers will also do things for you that you don’t ask for, but I won’t spill the beans on that. I wouldn’t want to spoil their surprises. Throughout your stay, if your butler discerns something they can do to make your experience more memorable, they do it.


That’s what butler service gets you when things work as they should. When things don’t work as they should, which happens to us about half the time, you get to your room and find it stocked with the previous guests’ preferences. I should say, you get what the previous guests left behind…what they didn’t manage to consume on their way out the door, or stuff into their luggage to take home. We handle that by letting our butler know what we want to have in the room straight away, and what we can wait on until the next scheduled room servicing. Our butler takes care of our immediate wants promptly, and informs the housekeeping staff to take care of the rest.


There are limits to what a butler can do for you. Don’t expect craft beer in your mini-fridge or a bottle of Patron 1942 in your bar set-up. You get what you request…as long as the resort or cruise ship stocks it. You also can’t always get dinner reservations for the time of your choosing in the most popular restaurants. Your butler will work with you to provide you with the best of what is available, and unless you are overly demanding, you’ll be happy.


Now let me talk about what butlers aren’t. A resort we recently visited describes their butler service like this, “Your personal butler is trained in accordance to exacting standards by the Guild of Professional English Butlers, which provides butlers and valets to nobility and celebrities worldwide.” Let me just say as impressive at that sounds, it is mostly marketing hype.


For starters, don’t expect Carson from Downton Abbey. We have yet to get an actual English butler...our butlers have all been locals. To be fair, they go through extensive training in the hospitality industry, and then receive specialty training in butler service from the “Guild” but they aren’t English. It’s a small thing, but expectations are important. Speaking of expectations, the “Guild of Professional English Butlers" isn’t a proper guild at all. It is the name of the company the travel industry uses to provide training and certification for their butlers.


And another thing…what the marketing literature describes as “your personal butler” is not a “personal” butler and they aren't exclusively yours. Each butler works as part of a team of 2-4 butlers, and each butler team is responsible for 6-8 rooms with only one butler on duty at any given time. Butler service is provided for 12-14 hours each day of your stay, and the team approach allows butlers to enjoy well deserved time off without interrupting your service. But no matter how you parse it, your butler service is not personal…it is a shared asset.


None of that is meant to diminish the attraction of having butler service. Our butlers have all worked hard, and they put in long hours. To get us our choice of spot on the beach they arrive before dawn, they serve us throughout the day, and to escort us to dinner they stay well past sundown. I’ve come to appreciate butler service, more so when I can book a butler level room at a discount. I put it on par with booking premium economy air…a little extra comfort for a reasonable hike in price. Even though I consider myself a low-maintenance traveler, at my age I’ve come to appreciate the pampering I get with butler service. If you haven’t tried it, give it a go. Fair warning though…once you’ve had a butler you won’t want to go without.

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