Events of Interest

  • In 2018, Jakarta-based Budi Prihardjanto rejoined the institute as the VP Asian Operations; he helped establish butler service in Indonesia and then the Maldives before training for the Institute for a few years and then branching off into a successful career as a General Manager and then Area Manager. He is now back with his first loves: butling and training, and working on taking over the Institute’s workload in Asia.
  • In 2018, the Institute teamed up with two leading hospitality industry professionals to create DNA QA with the goal of bringing about a radical change in the way hotels and resorts are rated and then also assisted in improving their offerings to their guests. DNA QA has created standards that reflect the needs and wants of current generations, including Asian guests, to measure the performance of butlers for the first time, and also to reflect the purpose of each property—meaning standards are customized so that the hotels fit themselves to their guests, not their guests to the hotel.
  • During the summer of 2018, the Institute trained 27 professors at the La Salle University in Manila, Philippines, so they could train hospitality butlers in the Filipino work force. St. Benilde is a premier university for hospitality in the country, and Filipinos make up a major portion of hospitality professionals around the world.
  • During 2017, the Chairman personally trained the butlers on all 14 cruise ships of Norwegian Cruise Lines, including their latest launch, Joy, reportedly the fourth largest ship in the world.
  • Chairman Steven Ferry is interviewed by Fox Business News in his capacity as Board Member and Director of International Butler Operations for the House of DreamMaker International concerning their latest launch, PASSPORT TO 50:

    The Institute's Chairman is interviewed on Fox Business News
    The Institute’s Chairman is interviewed on Fox Business News
  • The Institute launches a series of new Online Courses for butlers, household managers and service professionals anywhere, based on the recently released books, Serving The Wealthy. For the first time in history, those wishing to learn the ways of the modern butler can do so by enrolling in and doing these courses online – whether the full course for Private Service or Hospitality butlers, or shorter versions that focus on specific subjects and butler skill sets.
  • The Chairman is interviewed by “MA People,” two creative Swiss ladies he met while on assignment.
  • The two-volume, Serving the Wealthy, The Modern Butler’s and Household/Estate(s) Manager’s Companion is published in December 2016. At over 700 (printed) pages of text, 125 photographs, and a glossary of hundreds of words, it stands as the most comprehensive reference on superior service ever.
  • The Chairman is interviewed for Sea Island magazine.
  • The Chairman is interviewed for an article in Artful Living.
  • The Chairman appears on local TV while training at The Langham Hotel in Boston, and then returns to Boston to train account managers and senior managers at a premium software company, where they recognized that to interact with and develop relationships with CEO’s of multinationals, they have to know how to deal as smoothly as butlers do with their employers. This has since spawned a collaboration to export superior service to the IT and AI industries in a way that is intended to bring some element of humanity to these endeavors.
  • In 2014, the Institute hit  the 100-mark for the number of five-star hotels and resorts around the world at which they it has trained butlers and other staff.
  • An article from the Chairman, Mr. Bicycle and Other Challenges,  is published in various trade magazines, including the inaugural edition of Luxury Hoteliers’ Magazine.
  • The Institute becomes  a Founding Partner of the International Luxury Hotel Association.
    ilha member founding supplier
  •  The Institute trained two Hollywood actors on their roles as butlers, in the interests of promoting an accurate depiction of the profession—including the butler in the title role of the award-winning movie, The Butler;
  • Having trained at the multiple award-winning Six Senses Soneva Gili and Fushi Resorts in the Maldives in 2011 and 2012, and other resoerts in the region, the Institute helped open the iconic Maison Cheval Blanc Randheli for luxury brand LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey) in late 2013;
  • The Chairman addresses an audience of faculty and students at a top University in Moscow, Russia: Videos and Podcasts;
  • Congratulations are in order again for the executives and staff of Gili Lankanfushi in the Maldives. After  last year’s nominations as the World’s Leading Luxury Resort and World’s Leading Villa Resort & Spa at the World Travel Awards Grand Final 2012, they received another three World Travel Awards in 2013: the Indian Ocean’s Leading Luxury Resort and Leading Spa Resort, and the Maldives’ Leading Luxury Resort. The Mr. Fridays (butlers) at Gili Lankanfushi were trained extensively by the Institute during October 2011 and again in April 2015;
  • The Institute is now partnered with Thailand-based 365Playground to provide butler training and related services to its clients around the world as well as:

  • The Institute helped pioneer introducing butler-service standards into the high-end retirement community—the first-ever such adoption/adaptation;
  • The Chairman’s hospitality feature Creative Strategies for Maintaining Training Quality without Busting the Budget is republished in a variety of outlets;
  • The Chairman’s thought-provoking private-service article, Poor People Skills and the Wealthy, expresses some ideas that rattle around in the minds of most private and hospitality service professionals (and deep down, those they serve) but rarely see the light of day;
  • The Institute launches unique training in superior service skills and preventive, supportive and emergency medical care for cabin crew in private jets, and commercial airlines… read more
  • A Richey report gave a certain resort’s butlers a 3% rating (we’d prefer not to name them for this reason!). The Richey report that followed the Institute’s subsequent training showed an improvement to 89%. Still not ideal, but closer to it.