Originally Posted by
Randyk47
You know we are big fans of Silversea and have some 14 cruises with them in the last 12 years and a long 23-day cruise booked with them for next year. It was surprising to hear you had a bad butler experience but I trust your view and opinion from our other discussions here and through our few PMs. Can you share what exactly was off with him? Not at all going to make excuses for him or Silversea but wonder if this is an indicator of a little of what we saw on the Dawn earlier this year. On that cruise the staff in the whole was great, some even exceptional, but you could tell there were a few that were not up to speed which in our experience is unusual for Silversea. We did talk to the Hotel Director and he said they were well aware there were a few gaps. On our cruise on the Dawn they were still short 20 wait staff which according to the HD was 10% below their staffing for that position. He was a bit frustrated..
Aloha Randy,
I can't recall a lot of the miscues and omissions by this butler, but it got to the point over the first few days that I did not even want to see him. Any single example I might give you would seem minor and explicable, but the accumulating total of them became very frustrating. I finally asked him to send his supervisor to see me, and the supervisor got an "A" for quickly determining the right course of action, and also giving me more insight into the situation. The supervisor explained that the butler was new to his position and came from a different ship. The supervisor (somewhat surprisingly) told us that even the room attendant did not want to be assigned to the same rooms as this butler. The supervisor replaced our butler with someone he said that he had worked with for many years, and was very experienced. This butler was great, communicated well, followed-up, and went beyond the effort level that we expected.
On a whole, we were very pleased with the ship and crew. A much better culture on board this ship than our previous Silversea experience. If Silversea had a more customer-friendly future cruise deposit program, we would have put money down while onboard. It really is a loss for them, as once the "customer is off the lot" a business has a much lower chance of a sale.
Thanks to you (and others here) for all of the great input delivered over the years!