Kettering Northants QC

I often see luxury hotels advertising Butler Service, in fact I've stopped at several that claim to have it, but I've never seen it in action.

Is it a glib generally meaningless advertising line?
What does a butler service normally provide?
Do you usually pay extra for individual services provided?

Kagehitokiri

depends on the property.

examples = food/drink, laundry/pressing, unpacking, could use them for all hotel requests if you wanted to, business services, etc

the property should be clear on whats included.

had a stay recently at the sheraton park tower in london on their butler floor. drinks on arrival (chose champagne), laundry/pressing offered for free, dont think unpacking, and would have taken care of any requests if i had any. only thing i needed was reservations at morton's, which quintessentially arranged. also could have brought breakfast to the room, but didnt do that.

you pay for anything thats a regular request and not included, and i think tips are common depending on how much you have them do.

luxury

I don't find service any better at hotels which boast Butler service than those without. In fact, the best service I have received thus far are from hotels without the so called butler.

Perhaps it is different if you have a dedicated butler solely for your suite....

Kagehitokiri

thats what i assumed he meant..

KenJohn

Butler service = room service from a dedicated member of staff so you know the face or faces (one during the day and one in the evening) so the person you are dealing with.

It is really standard room service by all hotel service staff hand off to the butler (meals, laundry, amenities, etc) who will then deal with you direct.

The only time other staff enter the room is during cleaning.

MikeBOS

At St. Regis it's not even this...there are a pool of "butlers", with no particular connection between any one room and a single person. I agree that it's just a repackaging of standard hotel services...less pretentious hotels tend to call it "guest services" or something similar, but there's really no significant difference.

Ericka

.....and on the level of accomodation. The larger suites at the Amans, for instance, have one or two butlers that discretely stay in the suite with you 24/7. In this scenario, they do pretty much everything. I would guess this is the closest thing to a real butler.

In most hotel properties, a butler is just a "main point of contact".

slickalick

I'm not too fond of the hotels that i've stayed in who claim to offer a personal butler.

At the Burj in Dubai - the concept was especially strange - as whenever i had a request, it was dealt with by a different member of staff. Stayed there for 9 nights two months ago for a wedding and on the first day i requested my "butler" that a large bottle of room temperature Evian water be placed beside the bed upstairs every night. The first night & second night it was done by the initial butler, after that i never saw him again. Each night thereafter there was a different 'butler' stationed on my floor, and had to request the water every night.

You would think that at a hotel like the Burj could communicate simple requests such as this within their team.

Also dont you find that you tip a bit more than usual in places which have 'butler'?

flamboyant 1

IC Bali has dedicated butlers to the top suites (Bukit and the Villas). They unpack, arrange for dry cleaning, minibar, breakfast in room, shoeshine, car-pick up at the villa, etc.
Very nice guys, friendly informative regarding anything a tourist might want to know about Bali.

xracer

On one extreme was the bulter at the FS Chaing Mai Residence who lived in the place while we were there. She pretty much did anything we wanted within reason. In addition, if you were there with kids (we were not), she would be the nanny too. It was great and I gladly gave her a big tip at the end - she was worth it.

On the other end of things was the 'butler' at the OO Palmilla, who was only a 'point of contect' as Ericka says. And unfortunately, we saw him once and then he was never available again . Worse than that, if we contacted other resort employees to handle something that the bulter normally would, the response was 'we cannot do this, you must contact the butler'. 'Butler' service at it's worst.

This 'point of contact' type of butler server is IMHO truly useless. In a good 5* hotel, I should not need a single point of contact. I should be able to contact any hotel employee and they should either be able to help me or communicate with someone who can.

MegatopLover

I remember having butler service at the Regent in Hong Kong back in 1990. In that case, two young gentlemen thoroughly looked after me throughout my stay. They brought tea and refreshments when I arrived, took care of cleaning the room, and were generally available for anything I wanted. As a young man at the time, I was low maintenance. But they gave the impression that at least one of them was always "on call" and would be at the door within minutes when summoned. I'm not sure when this service was discontinued. 'Course the room rates back then were double (in 1990 dollars) what they are today (in 2006 dollars).

At the Peninsula in Hong Kong, where I stay now, they have valets available whenever you press the call button in your room. They bring ice, ice buckets and glassware; they take care of pressing, shoe shine, that sort of thing. I don't think the hotel advertises it as butler service, but it certainly feels a bit like butler service. Or maybe I'm still low maintenance. Nah.

The one experience I've had with "butler service" that REALLY felt like butler service was at The Chedi Club at Tanah Gajah near Ubud, Bali. Two young fellows met us at the entrance to the property when we arrived, introduced themselves, shepherded us through check-in formalities, and brought us on a tour of the property while on the way to our villa. When we asked for something for the minibar, they anticipated our tastes by clearing out stuff we didn't want and fully stocking it with what we did. Before departing for the evening, they made sure we didn't need anything further. They were there in the morning to escort us to breakfast. It was almost too attentive. When we came back from touring, they served us afternoon tea. When we went out for dinner one night, Mr. Megatop secretly told them it was my birthday and asked that they do something special. When we returned, they had made a trail of frangiapanni and rose petals leading into our villa, and left us a bottle of sparkling wine, a chocolate mousse cake, a floral arrangement complete with "Happy Birthday Mr. MegatopLover, from [their names]" written on a banana leaf. To top it off, they had drawn a rose petal and fangiapanni bath for us with tea-light candles all around. That was spectacular. Anyway, they also took care of laundry and, when we departed for the Chedi's sister hotel on the beach, they made sure our departure went smoothly. All this at no extra cost at all, not even the arrangements they made on my birthday. They were perhaps they most memorable aspect of our stay at this hotel and absolutely a reason to return. Oh, and one of them was just gorgeous.

My experience is somewhat limited, but I imagine you'll find elaborate butler service along these lines more often at resort properties than city hotels, and more often in certain parts of the world than in others.

aa4ever

The Oriental BKK has a butler who sits on the floor and essentially hands anything off to you that you need. Instead of calling guest services, there is a button by the bed that calls the butler. They essentially are the front line person.

It was nice. Was service any better? Probably not, but it did seem a bit more personal. I wouldn't go out of my way for it.

eutow

At the IC Marine Drive, there is a small pool of butlers who look after any requests and are the main contact points. It's nice if you stay a couple of times because the service from most is really friendly. It's not that the service is necessarily better than it would be otherwise, but it is nice to see familiar faces and know the person's service style.

At Chiva-Som in Thailand, butlers are assigned to the suites. The same person looks after you every day (excepting days off, of course!), and the service is very proactive. The butler would come to visit us in the suite at least once a day, and she would make sure she found us when we were outside the suite at least twice a day just to make sure we had what we needed and that everything was ok. Whenever we requested anything, she would deliver it. She was superb, and apparently impressed Mrs Mohammed Al Fayed sufficiently that she is now in her employ in London.

eutow

I have only stayed there once, and found the butler pretty useless. He made a big song and dance about the fact that I should contact him when I needed anything, and he would be happy to do it himself or to arrange it for me. I asked him for some shopping information for Dubai, and what he came up with was useless and irrelevant - I was able to get more useful information spending 5 mniutes online. There were also some problems trying to connect my laptop to the internet, and he promised he would sort it out. After a couple of hours of reminders, he eventually brought someone who wasn't able to sort it out. Very unimpressive, and consistent with my whole experience at that hotel.

RichardInSF

I have stayed in rooms in a few hotels that allegedly came with this "butler service," and I concur with the majority of the posters here that it has been pretty useless. Generally, I never saw the butler except initially when checking in. In a few hotels where you were supposed to push a button for your butler, a different person would show up almost every time.