When looking for interesting destinations for your employer (or yourself), don’t miss the jewels of America. We spent Christmas in Asheville, which is known as the Paris of the South. There seems to be some truth to it.
While different in architecture, The Grove Park Inn in Asheville is on a par with and just a few miles from the Biltmore in Asheville.
Is it or isn’t it?
Fukushima.
Is it a non-issue for all but those living around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, as governments and obliging media have been saying; or are the meltdowns spreading invisible tentacles of radioactive death around the world, as some are insisting and others are wondering, a sense of unease at our prospects for the future. How, then, would these tentacles impact hotels and tourist destinations as news radiated into the consumer consciousness and people changed their eating and travel habits?
Well, sorry to disappoint those who like a good drama to chew on, but the government and officials happen to be right on this one, once the science is understood.
PR mishandlings have resulted in (mostly unnecessary) loss of hospitality business in Fukushima and surrounding areas, including Tokyo; but no impact has been felt in other countries (with one exception, which has seen a big pick- up in business); and no future impact is to be expected from the feared-by-some collapse of all living systems.
If you had doubts about which way it would go, read on, put them to rest: There are enough real issues in life without being distracted by invented ones.
Slaying the Fukushima Dragon, PR 101
Atomic science and nuclear power are not the easiest nuts to crack, leaving must people scratching their heads; much panic and worry has been generated over the years on the subject with Nagasaki, Cold War propaganda, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island as high points; nuclear radiation is invisible, which makes it spooky; it is doubly mysterious because governments tend to stamp “secret” on files relating to the subject and threaten to drop bombs on countries dabbling in the stuff. The whole subject sums up to “You have no future, you might as well lie down and die,” which attitude can be self-fulfilling.
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” said Franklin Roosevelt. Governments learned long ago that fear created by an incident invariably resulted in more damage than the incident itself.
Case in point: The days immediately following the March 11 earthquake off the coast of Japan saw mass hoarding of essentials as well as an exodus of thousands of non-Japanese and Japanese alike, especially from Tokyo. This was before the public even knew anything about the three reactors melting.
Tokyo residents had been spooked by a 30-fold increase in radiation levels to 0.00011 mSv/hr* after radiation plumes headed to Tokyo on March 15 (and again on March 21). Properly briefed, and listening, they would have stayed at home, because Hong Kong residents typically experience, every day, 0.00014 mSv/hr, Londoners 0.00025 mSv/hr, and Chennai residents in southern India 0.00342 mSv/hr (or over 30 times higher than Tokyo spiked).
* the amount of radiation that has been absorbed by a body—the dose and its projected biological effect: “m/Sv” (milliSieverts) with a notation made of the time frame during which that dose was received— mSv/d—per day; mSv/yr—per year.
Then a sample of Tokyo tap water on March 22 revealed levels of radiation at 210 Bq/l,** more than double Japan’s recommended limit for infants. The government said the health risks were minimal, yet the people of Tokyo began bulk-buying bottled water. The radiation dropped below the maximum recommended level the next day.
** the amount of radioactivity that has fallen on an inanimate object or area:
“Bq” (Becquerels), which is then qualified by the area being measured:
Bq/sm —per square meter for surfaces;
Bk/kg —per kilogram of weight of a solid substance, such as soil;
Bq/cm—per cubic meter dispersed in air;
Bq/l —per liter dispersed in liquids.
A Bq is equivalent to one radioactive disintegration per second, indicating how rapidly radioactive material is undergoing disintegration and how intensely radioactive a substance or location is.
Governments, following poor advice from their Communication Advisors, have stoked the fires of disbelief and panic by their ineptitude and lack of public relations application: issuing half-truths and opinions instead of understanding the concerns of their constituents and communicating the facts at a level they can understand. When the FDA decided to revert to quarterly reporting of their radiation testing (quite correctly, based on the low radiation numbers), some radiation vigilantes toting Geiger counters were still finding elevated (non-dangerous) levels. The public mood was expressed by one individual: “The EPA says eating fish caught in Japan with radiation levels 2,400% above Federal limits (170 Bq/kg) does not pose any health risks, and rainwater at 18,100% the drinking water maximum allowed does not pose any concern. What I would really like to know at this point is, what levels qualify as ‘levels of concern?’”
It didn’t help that the EPA admitted 37 of its 200+ RADNET monitoring stations were in-operational and did not consider it a priority to fix them. Several units showed an uncharacteristic and unrealistic pattern and lowered rate starting exactly on March 11. “The broken system left us all unprotected; the confusion, apprehension, and fear witnessed as people try to wade through the incomplete and inaccurate data online” was how one person expressed his frustrations.
It didn’t help that distrust of government statements is high among many, given the past track of government ineptitude and forwarding monied interests over the public good, pushing harmful solutions and suppressing good ones: for instance, the FDA in the US stated drinking milk with some radionuclides in it is safe, while earlier falsely stating drinking raw milk to be dangerous and the subject of pre-dawn raids, guns drawn, on such as Amish communities.
Nor did it help that the FDA appeared to be working behind closed doors on how to raise the allowable radiation rates: latest version leaked is allowing a single glass of water to contain what today is considered the permissible exposure for a whole lifetime; and allowing long-term clean-up limits thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has allowed up to now. Is this a problem? Maybe not when all the facts and figures are looked at, but it doesn’t sit well in terms of motive during a nuclear crisis, and is pretty poor PR management, considering that the EPA had been working on this standardization for the past decade and were not actually engaged in an effort to fudge the numbers in response to Fukushima.
The Japanese government swung too far in the direction of keeping their cards close to their chest to avoid panic—perhaps mixed with the cultural need to save face—by cracking down on “irresponsible rumors” about radiation releases in the news media and web sites that criticized or scrutinized the official Japanese government position. As a result, the weather bureau failed to alert those living in the path of radioactive cloud so they could take precautions; and reports of children with signs of radiation sickness were reclassified as “rumors,” to the detriment of the children.
The Internet was (and is) abuzz with even doctors and scientists fanning the flames of panic by reporting (for instance) 72,000 times the radiation of Hiroshima being in the atmosphere based on the false datum that three spent-fuel pools had burned, whereas only the housing of one had burned for two hours; and that infants were dying from radiation poisoning on the West and East Coasts.
Instead of expressing opinions such as President Obama’s pronunciamentos, or throwing out random scientific facts, or suppressing information, the governments would have been far better off perceiving the level of understanding on the subject in the populace, and then explaining the basic scientific truths at a level that the public could understand. Understanding = calm. No understanding = panic and distrust. It’s pretty simple, really.
What are the Facts of the Matter?
In terms of accumulated radiation, by early May, after major emissions had ceased from Japan, Northern US states showed accumulations of 1-10 Bq/sm and Southern States less than 1 Bq/sm—inconsequential amounts. By comparison, the level of radioactive fallout currently from the 2,000-plus bombs exploded in the 1940-60s (more than 50% by the US), is 0.037 to 3.7 Bk/kg just of Plutonium each year.
In terms of what on earth is all this stuff about atoms and nuclear power and bombs, the truth is basically simple, too.
Matter is made up of atoms which have a dense center (nucleus) surrounded by a cloud of minute particles called “electrons.” Most of these atoms are stable and do not change their basic characteristics. Some atoms, however, are not stable, spontaneously changing into other atom types by releasing energy. The process of these atoms changing is called “radioactivity.” The energy released is referred to as “radiation.” The simple concept of radiation is “matter that shoots out energy, rather than just sitting there looking pretty or ugly.”
Radionuclides (literally meaning “a ray coming from the center”) emit two things:
1. gamma rays (pure energy with very short wavelengths and high frequency) and/or
2. subatomic particles (the protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up an atom —and 25 other really, really small and sometimes extremely short-lived parts that scientists have identified within atoms).
When sub-atomic particles start flying around, they can affect the electronic state of nearby stable atoms, causing them in turn to chemically enter highly energetic and unstable states. Known as “free radicals,” these unbalanced atoms are bad news in living organisms because in sufficiently high concentration, they damage cells and tissues, potentially resulting in mutation, radiation sickness, cancer, and even death according a) to acute and total exposure and b) the physical, mental, and spiritual health/resilience of the life form.
In low doses, however, radiation is not particularly hazardous. Radiation is all around us and harmless to humans on Earth right now (this wasn’t the case earlier), as it occurs naturally at low levels from the radioactive matter remaining in the environment (70% of the dose the average human receives, of which 55% is gamma rays from space and radon gas from the rocks/earth), and such as potassium, bananas, Brazil nuts, granite and uranium-laced stone used in some buildings, and x-rays. Over time, the body has evolved robust defense mechanisms to deal with any potential radiation damage. Radiation harm occurs when radiation reaches elevated levels that interfere with or overwhelm these natural bodily defenses.
Basic confusions are common concerning the dangers of radiation, which, if dispelled, could bring a lot of relief to many. Some very competent and well-meaning experts consider any dose of radiation unsafe, increasing the risk of cancer incrementally. Yet certain facts contradict this.
1) Americans receive an average dose of about 3.6 mSv/yr, or 0.01 mSv/d from all sources of background radiation. Those in high altitudes receive more cosmic radiation: La Paz, the highest city in the world, dishes it out at 2.19 mSv/yr whereas sea level averages 0.26 mSv/yr. Those who smoke cigarettes can add 2.8 mSv/yr on average, as cigarettes contain radioactive Lead-210 and Polonium-210. The highest known level of background radiation is in a 77-square mile section of Kerala in Southern India, where inhabitants average 70 mSv/yr because the ground has high levels of radioactive Thorium, Uranium, and Monazite. As a note, cancer levels there are no higher there than anywhere else in the world with lower background radiation levels.
2) Man-made sources of radiation over the last seven decades add to the exposure, but not significantly, unless one happens to be close to a source.
i. Microwave exposure from cell phones and tower transmitters cause nuclei in human blood cells to splinter, with DNA single- and double-strand breaks at radiation levels well below the current federal safe standards. In the future, WiMAX promises coverage of 3,000 square miles from a single tower.
ii. Over 2,000 atomic and hydrogen bombs set off and tested, the radioactive particles of which are still falling on the world—at approximately 10 mSv/yr of exposure for an individual.
iv. Multiple nuclear accidents, discharges, and burials at sea.
v. Irradiation: The FDA-recommended use of nuclear reactor waste as a form of “electronic pasteurization” is applied to US-produced non-organic food at levels between 333 and 10,000 times the lethal dose for a human.
3) Radiation does not invariably cause cancer.
i. As with any toxin, if radiation is delivered rapidly in large volume, it will overwhelm the body’s defenses, causing illness and possible death. So at high doses, radiation can result in cell death, organ failure, and death.
However, at lower doses received over time, the body is more likely to be able to repair the damage before it can become too severe. Specifically, radiation disrupts the natural process of regeneration and growth of cells. At low doses, the body is capable of repairing this damage, or such damage from any other source; and that failing, destroying the injured cell so that it will not affect neighboring cells. When it fails in both of these goals, cancer can result.
Low-level radiation can slightly increase one’s chances of developing cancer, but far less so than smoking and chemical exposures.
ii. An equal amount of radiation received by different people will, as with any toxin, affect each differently, from having no effect at all to making them ill or even killing them. Not surprisingly, the factors influencing this variation are the strength of the person’s immune system, their ability to handle physical, emotional, and spiritual stress, and existing levels of radiation in, and damage to, the body.
Malnutrition and demoralization in Japan in 1945, for instance, contributed significantly to the severity of the symptoms experienced by victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet even then, the violent delivery of overwhelming amounts of radiation resulted in 160,000 people being injured or killed…but 260,000 surviving, including one gentleman in his twenties who was just under two miles from both blasts. He suffered burns and died finally of cancer—in his mid-nineties.
As Michio Kushi, a leading nutrition teacher and philosopher, points out: “Radiation and pollution can accelerate the accumulation and spread of cancer, but only if the body is already in a weakened state.”
iii. Radiation can be detoxified from the body using various products/supplements, and regimens like the Purification Rundown offered by various outlets; so once a person is exposed, it does not mean he has been handed a death sentence.
iv. Even where a person does contract cancer, it can be cured quite easily, despite statements to the contrary from the $1 trillion cancer industry and efforts by the FDA: See http://www.burzynskimovie.com/ for a documentary on just one example of the FDA and cancer industry in action.
4. Inhaling, and to a lesser degree ingesting, radioactive particles is much more dangerous than having it land on the skin (where it can be washed off) or being exposed to a radioactive particle at a distance. The reason being that the closer one is to a radiation source, the greater the harm it can render to the cells. A radioactive apple one meter away is twice as dangerous as when it is four meters away, although it does not represent much threat in either case. Eating that apple, however, places radiation in direct contact with the body, thereby increasing the radiation intensity by a million times compared with the apple when it is one meter distant.
i. Having said this, though, it is almost impossible, in the normal course of events, to inhale or ingest fatal levels of radiation. Take man-made Plutonium, which is two-million times more toxic than naturally occurring radioactive material. The largest speck of Plutonium that can be readily inhaled and absorbed deep in the lungs is about 3 micrometers in diameter and 0.14 millionths of a mg in weight. It would take inhaling 0.08 mg to be fatal, or 570,000 inhalable particles.
ii. Even being 300 yards directly downwind from a nuclear bomb detonation would only result in inhaling 0.0001 mg of Plutonium, an amount that would increase the risk of death by cancer by 0.12%. Obviously, being that close to a nuclear blast would bring about more pressing issues for a person, such as being vaporized, flung a mile or two, or burned beyond recognition.
5. Life recovers a lot faster than has been appreciated generally after radiation exposure. This is not to say that those immediately exposed do not and have not experienced horrific injuries and death. However, the 19-mile Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl that was too heavily radiated to allow human occupation and work in 1986 is now so lush with flora and fauna (including rare species not seen there for centuries) that the Ukrainian government designated it a wildlife sanctuary in 2007. It was discovered that plants have an unexpected ability to adapt to radiation with certain changes in their proteins. Cows and horses within a few miles had recovered by the second generation. Radiation levels have dropped to the extent that the land lost to agriculture and forestry (roughly the size of Connecticut) is mostly back in production (although operational costs are higher as a result of the cultivation techniques, fertilizers, and additives needed). Bio-accumulation of radioactivity in fish was high initially, but back to safe levels in most places; in animals, for instance, 1-in-440 wild boar in Germany in 2010 had radiation levels exceeding the safe limit.
The Fukishima Daiichi disaster was contained by the Japanese engineers and while the situation is not resolved fully yet, it is under control in terms of there being no more significant radioactive emissions and a long-term, if unproven, strategy being evolved to close down the plant and render it safe—the challenges are still huge, but the immediate peril is passed. What emissions did occur were distributed very thinly throughout the Northern hemisphere at doses slightly more than normal background radiation—or sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, rather than being consumed continually by fish that would then be eaten by humans.
By mid-July, radiation from Fukushima Daiichi had spread over 370 square miles in sufficient quantity to render it uninhabitable—the same area approximately as Chernobyl. But outside that area, radiation levels and exposure rates were essentially back to normal background exposure, and at the source, Fukushima Daiichi itself, there was very little leakage while hosting extremely high levels of contamination.
The upshot: unless you live near Fukushima Daiichi, you have absolutely no need to be concerned about radiation in your food, water, the air you breathe, your body—or worrying if our days are numbered.
PR 101
If governments had run an educational campaign, and Tourist Boards run an advertising campaign, we wouldn’t be seeing the dramatic drop in tourism in Fukushima, or an exodus of people from Tokyo, and the world given yet one more reason to hunker down.
At least the Japanese government has agreed to reimburse hoteliers for lost business in the area, but that is reactive, as opposed to proactive.
Proactive is the Ukrainian government working to increase visitors to Chernobyl to 1 million from 60,000. Business has been booming since Fukushima Daiichi hit the headlines: in Chernobyl, tourists are loaned Geiger counters and enjoy (one hopes) lunch in the Chernobyl canteen, as well as tours of the plant and land. Fukushima could one day take advantage of this newly developed niche: Radioactive Tourism. But they don’t need to wait that long. During the crisis, tourists arrived just because Fukushima is a beautiful place and they understood that, apart from specific pockets of radiation that should be avoided (generally out to 50 miles North and West of the plant) and certain sources of food that should be watched, there was nothing to fear.
The take-home lesson from Fukushima for the rest of the hospitality industry is: don’t let the government and hysterical media mess up the public’s perception of your area if it suffers some calamity. Take responsibility for educating the public so they remain calm and don’t cancel their reservations or decide to go somewhere else for their vacation or business convention.
If some newscaster intones gleefully yet somberly, ‘The Japanese government reported (some disastrous datum),” then make sure it is followed (in the case of Fukushima) with a piece from the Fukushima Tourist Board that the sun is still shining and that, despite the ongoing tragedy, 70% of Fukushima is unaffected, and here are some simple facts concerning nuclear radiation….”
Not to minimize the seriousness of the situation—heroic effort was required of TEPCO workers to bring the situation under control, and many in governments and other organizations around the world overheated their brain cells and worked their fingers to the bone on the issue. But they need to go back and study PR 101: it would have taken them where they wanted to go a lot faster and more smoothly, and would not have cast a pall over tourism and life in general, wondering if the sky was going to fall, laden with radioactivity.
Steven Ferry, a multi-published author in a number of genres and industries, is also Chairman of the US-based International Institute of Modern Butlers, providing advocacy, training, and consulting on the superior service style of the British butler.
Republished with permission of hotelexecutive.com, all rights reserved
Just skirted Hurricane Irene in the Bahamas, doing a mystery passenger visit to check out the butler service on a cruise ship.
First time I have been on a non-private cruise.
The fact that it was packed to the gunnels shows the client has a successful formula.
A curious view from my balcony—propellerheads.
Can someone come up with a caption?
It’s always a surprise to discover another film about a butler: this one, The Fallen Idol, is a 1948 “thriller” in which the butler did it, apparently (but he didn’t), and is interesting more for the butler’s failings that are taken for granted than the slow-moving plot line.
The butler, Baines, is calm in the face of panic, to be sure, always well dressed and mannered, but
a) he is carrying on with a member of the staff while married;
b using the guest bedroom for a little dalliance with this lady while the boss is away;
c) allowing the housekeeper (his wife) to run the show;
d) allowing the employer’s young son to run away at night;
e) taking him to the zoo and not keeping an eye on him because he is busy flirting….
the list goes on, and none of it particularly remarked on as derelictions of duty, because Baines is portrayed as such an avuncular and well-meaning butler, that his failings can be overlooked.
Curioser and curioser.
“If hotels can have ridiculous things like butlers, they can certainly have bed bug inspectors,” bemoaned one hotel magazine editor in December, 2010. This might well be the epitaph for butler service in hotels, as it is too commonly practiced: in booming Asia, seemingly one-for-one, butler training programs have gone to the cheapest bidder who, perforce, is obliged to reduce training to well below the irreducible minimum. Against this backdrop, we have to wonder if butlers really are here to stay. I believe they are, but they need a make-over.”
The last project we were asked to bid on in Asia was to train 100 butlers at a time for 3 hours each. Anything related to understanding what a butler is, how he thinks, acts, his persona, goes right over the heads of those enquiring, who can only think in terms of their employees learning rote procedures. The essence of the butler is glossed over, missed, rejected in the drive to offer butler service in name alone.
Having written the book on hotel butlers that has been used to create many butler departments around the world, one has to wonder if the whole concept of the hotel butler has been a failed experiment, a mistake, simply unleashing a Pandora’s box of tired knock-offs—like the inferior and short-lived knock-offs that pour out of Asia, displacing Western manufacturers and offering consumers choices between cheap knock-offs; or is it a work in progress that necessarily involves a clash of cultures in the face of which, a calm insistence on standards being met will win the day, eventually?
One hopes the latter, but the economic pressures on hotels to train their staff without an adequate budget and of butler trainers to take any work means there are precious few troops fighting on the side of quality. When I first began training hotel staffs as butlers, the program was one month long with follow-up visits. Keep this in mind as you read the next few paragraphs.
The pressure to institute butler service pushes up against the lack of budget and results in the solution to take the training in-house and fudge the program, much in the same way that some hotels are looking for any green certification to look green, rather than institute an honest-to-goodness program that will cost some money upfront to save a lot in the long run and reduce the ecological footprint of their facility. One famous chain, for instance, was given three of the Hotel Butler books as a first step in engaging the Institute’s training services, and from those created its own program, which ended up being a 2-3 Butler rating on a scale of 0-5. A start, to be sure, but hardly doing justice either to the full range of services a butler can provide in a hotel, nor to the guests, nor to the stature of the brand.
The same DIY impulse can be seen in the hotel that justified to the monetary powers-that-be the bringing in of an Institute trainer on the basis that representatives from other locations in its chain could also attend and then demand the trainer’s materials so they could (as it finally came out) train others as butlers back at their hotels. Yet the training had been designed as adequate for the half-dozen butlers from the host hotel, and the addition of a further 14 students stretched the trainer sufficiently thin that it was hard to provide the needed practical training for any of the students, let alone train them to train others.
In another example, a government training agency made permission for the Institute to provide training to a large hotel contingent upon its own trainers sitting in and cribbing the materials verbatim—while not engaging in any of the practical training—with the expectation that they be able to offer the course themselves as the sole supplier to other hotels in the country.
In one famous hotel, a VIP guest asked a second butler to pack his suitcases, giving him instructions on how he wanted it done—the first butler presumably not meeting the guest’s expectations. The guest then sat for the next twenty minutes, engrossed in the second butler’s technique (paying tribute to the guest’s request while moving beyond it to the optimal way of packing a suitcase). The guest response: “I’ve never seen anyone pack a suitcase like that, wonderful!” The difference between the butlers: The second had been trained properly, the first had been trained in-house by butlers who had been trained properly. And as the second butler admitted, he may have excelled in the guest’s eyes, but suitcase packing had not been his strong suit during his training.
It is generally and correctly perceived that hotel butlers are a nice idea for luxury hotels, an adaptation of the superior service to be found in the private sector—whether those individuals are called Butlers or Personal Hosts or anything else. However, one fundamental reality has been overlooked, the enforcement of which is sabotaging the program: in private service, money is no object when it comes to servicing the employer and his or her guests. In bringing the butler model into hotels, we run into an environment where money is the object (especially when the hotel is owned by investors rather than hoteliers), and increasingly so in the sense of money being a barrier when an economy—local, regional, national, or international—hits rough weather.
This fundamental contradiction and oxymoron is taking the wind out of the sails of the hotel butler concept. We are trying to make a Rolls Royce out of a Ford. We are asking swine to appreciate pearls—not intending to be insulting by the metaphor, but to borrow a particularly evocative image. Are butlers truly only for the extremely wealthy? One suspects so, although many a not-so-wealthy guest has been thrilled by butler service precisely because it is an exciting upgrade, whereas the really wealthy generally have become inured to, or merely expect to receive, butler style service.
However, where the rubber meets the road, or the butler the guest, the truth is that superlative service wins loyalty, (even if begrudgingly in the worst case of the most hardened guests who, even while grumbling habitually, do return because “the hotel with butler service is the least disappointing of the hotels”).
The initial vision of tiered service in a hotel, offering the very high-end suites butler service, is still totally valid. Perhaps where the concept went off the rails was when hotels tried to offer (and finance) butler service in all rooms/suites/villas, and so found such programs overly expensive. Many years ago, I consulted the flagship of a famous luxury brand on their butler options: their grand hotel had about 4 five-star hotels moving in to their city, presenting competition for the first time. Even with only about 60 suites, full-time, dedicated butler service for all suites would require over 100 butlers and be prohibitively expensive. Whereas dedicated butler service (meaning one per suite) for the top few suites, providing the full range of butler service (and earning them a top 5-Butler rating) would have a) been economically feasible, b) provided the level of service that kind of guest would expect, and c) would have helped maintain standards for butler service in hotels and made it something desirable, rather than something annoying.
Maybe “A Butler for all” is the basic misconception in importing the butler concept into a hotel. In other words, if you can’t afford the real thing, nobody is fooled by the Ford that has been pimped into a Rolls Royce. We are allowing the desire to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace to push us into this whole culture of Economy Butlers, Ford Butlers, Butler-Service Wannabes, all of which is self-defeating and oxymoronic. What can possibly be special or noteworthy about something that isn’t?
We have come this far, and too far, to drop the hotel butler concept. The genie is out of the bottle, we need to stay the course and keep pushing for perceptions to change and standards to be raised. Meaning a move away from scaled-back butler service for all guests, and minimalistic in-house or scaled-down-to-the-point-of-ludicrousness training based on drumming in how to perform a few rote actions into butlers hopelessly at sea about who they are and why. It means concentrating the butler service offering to the top suites to justify high rack-rates, as well as any guest in any other suite who is willing to pay the premium. It means training butlers who really are butlers in mind and spirit, the heart and soul of discretion, knowledge, anticipation, invisible service. It means reaffirming the butler as Rolls Royce in the mind of the butler, management, owner, and guest.
Whether or not this transformation transpires rather depends on the economy, guest demand, and whether hotels recognize a demographic that wants a) to be pampered (discreetly, not conspicuously) while b) still receiving value for money.
As the NYU’s June 2010 International Hotel Investors’ Conference showed when Bill Fischer stood as a lone voice decrying the focus on finance when good service, which ultimately drives the bottom line in a service industry, seems to take a back seat to investor returns, especially when so many hotels are owned by investor groups rather than hoteliers who really live and breath service. And there’s the rub.
How will this actually play out? My sense is butlers will divide into the Rolls Royce and the Rolls Royce Wannabes: a small but exclusive selection of venues will provide genuine butler service to some of their guests in larger resorts, or to all the guests in smaller resorts/villas.
And in the rest, butlers will be commodities, marketing gimmicks churning out the irreducible minimum, the formulaic attempts at one-size-fits-all “wowing” of guests that bows to economic pressures and the needs of mass tourism.
The danger is that the latter will so besmirch the reputation of the profession and service offering, that the whole idea will fall into disrepute and be abandoned.
And that would be a shame, because butlers really do represent a quantum leap in service potential for travelers…offering a suite of en-suite services that nobody else can come close to offering in a hotel environment. It is hard to see how the recently conceived hotel butler, whether called a butler or a personal valet, in providing such personalized service, would not be an integral part of every hotel brand claiming to offer luxury services. The butler is here to stay. The questions are, which hotels will strive to achieve the real thing, and which will be content to offer cheap knock-offs? If this article reaches anyone already invested in, or planning to be invested in, such personalized service, it would be salutary to request a consultation from one of the more reputable butler establishments and then invest in the personnel, equipment, and training that will result in real butler service—for that, surely, is the goal for guests and brand alike?
GONG XI FA CAI… words we learned (meaning “Happy New Year”) while we stayed in Singapore over the Chinese New Year.
Stopped off at the Long Bar at Raffles for the required Singapore Sling followed by dinner with Arif Asmath, Director Rooms, and erstwhile Institute trainer. We were ably assisted by Dheeraj Bhatia, Raffles’ Sommelier, who steered us in the direction of some remarkable Chateau Margaux, a Premier Cru being highlighted in the ongoing annual Wine, Food, & Arts festival.
Returned another time for afternoon tea. We had already sampled such a tea at TWG in the Ion Center. They have a wide selection of teas well presented in a tea pot with its own metal cosy; the food is not traditional, but overall a good effort.
At Raffles, however, we were disappointed at the offer of a single tea (Breakfast Tea) for the entire tea, although a request for an Oolong was met without batting an eyelid. Raffles provides a buffet of hot Asian, as well as multiple desserts…an interesting way of providing multiple possible courses. Sandwiches were not open face, and entirely too much bread (see the pile of unused bread on my side plate).
But overall, a good effort, if they’d just apply the same variety and creativity to the teas as they do to the foods (and skip offering champagne as a basic element of their “tea”).
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?
First of all, by overcoming the obstacles they met on the way, starting with launching the service. In the case of the iconic Burj al Arab in Dubai, the problem was finding qualified staff in a country that did not have many locals to draw upon. When you have to man a department of something like 160 butlers, it is easy to see why this would be a challenge. In the end they sourced their staff from about 100 countries. Falling Rock in Pennsylvania, a privately held resort designed in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright and boasting a challenging Pete Dye-designed golf course, also provides 24-hour butler service to its 42 rooms and suites. Their main challenge, being on a huge estate in the countryside far from any cities, was likewise recruiting butlers, which they resolved by targeting regional colleges and universities.
Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe did not have such issues, but struggled with the more prosaic problem of making their pantries flow sufficiently to keep up with the demand for butler services. In the ideally situated Seven Stars Galleria in Milan, their challenge was being able to deliver the same level of service required in a private estate, while being in a hotel environment. This resolved with a perception shift that each room or suite was a single house with the most important guest in it. One of these hotels also mentioned justifying a large payroll as a challenge, which they overcame by providing the expected level of service with concomitant guest satisfaction. They all also hired experts to train their staff, rather than trying to fudge the training by in-house solutions not based on the butler model.
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.
In Seven Stars Galleria, the most challenging aspect of the head butler’s work is making sure the guests are satisfied from the moment they arrive at the hotel, as many stay for just one night. This is resolved by empowering the butlers to deal with whatever comes up so that the guest is always given superb service and treated as the most important person.
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.
How about the perception of the butler department by the butlers in these hotels? With an industry churn of about 31% per annum, Harrah’s has experienced zero churn over the last three years; Falling Rock 20%; Burj al Arab 14-18% until the Front Office merged with them, at which time the numbers increased to 25%, the same rate as the hotel where there is friction between the butlers and other departments. Whichever way you cut it, butler departments, when well run, have lower churn than the industry as a whole. Maybe this comes about because “there is no greater feeling when, as a butler, you can provide a service to a guest who has it all and still impress them.” and “Exceeding the guests’ expectations is the biggest reward we could hope and strive for” and “I am convinced the hotel butler role is the best guest-experience- maker a hotel can have.” In summary, “Our guests come to our hotel for our rating and our reviews, but they come back because of our service and our staff.”
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.”
Then there is the hotel where the butlers are struggling, even while earning a reputation for the service they provide: the friction between butler and other departments traces back to the manager’s perception of butler service, “not seeing or understanding the link between the butler and guest satisfaction and loyalty, and the butler’s role in differentiating the property in the local marketplace”—a bit like a farmer using a Rolls Royce to haul hay”.
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.
For those wanting to establish butler service, all hotels agree that experienced butlers should be hired if possibile, certainly managers, and those with a passion to serve; train them repeatedly; and focus on attention to detail, especially in compiling and following guest preference databases (which makes anticipation possibile).
Butlers are still relatively new to the hospitality industry, which is behaving a bit like it is reaching puberty on the subject: all angst and knobbly knees about how to proceed…which makes these five hotels early developers and good role models for those following close behind. If service is the name of the game, then added service opportunities seem to be a no-brainer. Certainly, more and more guests will feel this way, the more they experience the ideal.
This article was also published by HotelExecutive.com, Hospitality.net, Hotel-Online.com, Naga-News.com, InSelfDevelopment.com, International Hotel and Restaurant Association (www.ih-ra.com), HSMAI Europe, Interceder.net and HotHoteliers.com
The drive to go green by hotels comes not so much from environmental concerns as from economic considerations. How then, does an expensive butler department fit into this fundamental drive to balance shrinking budgets? Perhaps a more fundamental question could be visited first: is there still a demand for luxury in the hospitality world? This may sound like a question that could only come from a Martian or a socialist or communist zealot, but at the 32nd NYU International Investor Conference held in midtown Manhattan during early June, a gathering of preeminent capitalists, the first workshop was entitled Luxury: Postmortem or Post AIG? The words of one president of one luxury chain spoke of switching from imagery of a butler holding a silver tray with sterling silver on it, to less evocative symbolism. The general consensus was that luxury had taken a beating in the media and thereafter in the public mood, following ill-advised AIG-related pronunciamentos by President Obama about corporate use of travel and hotels which, it turns out, only made it hard on hotels and their rank and file in hospitality whose jobs depend on corporations continuing to travel.
But just as a government cannot legislate alcoholic beverages out of existence, a tendency to strive for quality products and services among those who can afford it cannot be repressed, either. The majority of products in the US may be built now in China to Chinese standards—melamine in the milk powder, heavy metals in children’s jewelry and who knows what in the drywall—but the same desperate effort by too many companies around the world to find the lowest price no matter the quality of the product is a no-win game in the long-run. It is ironic that the great emerging wealth in China, built in part on the sale of fake Gucci bags, speaking metaphorically, is demanding real Gucci bags (speaking real-world fashion now), not the fake stuff, and they may well funnel the much needed demand back into luxury brands. China is certainly the hope for many luxury hotel brands as they build multiple new properties in that great country. IHG alone needs to hire and train 70,000 new staff in China.
But having seen the expectations in the country of butler trainers, in terms of foreshortened training schedules demanded, the focus on the mechanical actions to the exclusion of any understanding of the persona and mindset of the butler, and in some cases, trying to take materials and make their own courses—the great effort to provide cheap imitations—one can only be concerned about the nature of the quality being provided. Still, Rome was not built in a day, and China will need more than a few years to move away from the great grey monolithic culture and find its roots again as a nation that produced the Great Wall of China (I doubt there are substandard materials or workmanship in that), and some of the world’s finest porcelain, for instance.
So, even though hotels are still in retrench mode in most parts of the world (Sands just spent $6 billion on their monumental Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and everywhere one looks in Singapore [and no doubt in many parts of China], construction cranes seem as plentiful as trees, so it is not true that retrenchment is global), luxury is still very much on the radar.
Are butlers still on the map as part of the vision for luxury? Not necessarily, as hotels have performed well without them for centuries. But whether one calls them “butlers” or “personal assistants” or whatever, if they are not performing the full duties of a hotel butler and with the correct mindset and communication skills, then hotels are missing a golden opportunity to pamper guests and give them the personalized service they expect (if they can afford it) or would like (if they cannot afford it) in their suites. Unfortunately, too many hotels have taken short cuts in establishing their butler departments and steered them off the full measure of the services they can provide. As a result, their butler programs have fallen short and may have resulted in more outgo and less income than hoped. That’s a bit like adding boiled coal (melamine) to milk powder because it has a chemical signature so close to protein that it fools inspectors into thinking that the milk powder has superior protein content, and so commanding a higher sale price.
So the current downplaying and –sizing of butler departments comes in part because of misguided political efforts to rein in financial and other companies creating a public mood that eschews the luxury it actually prefers; and in part because of improperly established butler departments that did not give the guests the desired service levels or the hotel the desired returns, making them easy targets for retrenchment-minded CFOs and GMs.
Yet properly established butler departments offer a whole new and vital en-suite arm of service not open to hotels until the last couple of decades. Guests are looking for value, and how better to add value than add services? And what better way to bring about increased rack rates (or justify existing ones) and increase revenue than the personalized servicing of high-end guests?
Bill Fischer of the preeminent Fischer Travel, spoke from the audience as a somewhat lonely voice (in a convention that was focused on rarified financial issues rather than the fundamental issue of service quality), noting that five-star hotels are falling too much into offering two-star service these days. The examples he gave made his point rather pithily, offering not so much a warning but a plea to keep the melamine out of the milk powder if we want to attract and service his demanding clientele. Certainly, at $600 a night, one would expect a private bar, some water to drink, and Internet access included, maybe even a butler, but this was not the case at our hotel.
For as noted by another CEO (with at least one luxury chain under his command) at the NYU conference, wealthy people do want luxury. There are two fundamental shifts with many of them, however: They are not just looking to be pampered, but also to make some connection with the environment/community/culture around them. One CEO spoke of their guests being taken to a local mosque and hearing an Imam preach on the similarities between the major religions, rather than the differences between them or the righteousness of one over the other. And the second shift is the desire to see a green component that is truly from the heart, rather than one presented Hollywoodesque, as a greenwashing PR façade.
Which brings us back to the main theme of this article: is the push for luxury, and therefore butler departments that cost money to establish and run, compatible with the drive for greening, which is designed to save money in a tight economy? Well, it takes money to make money, and it takes money to green. Not as much as one might expect, especially when new builds are designed green…the increased cost appears to be about 5% of construction costs over convention/non-green construction; and with energy savings alone of 20-30% of operational costs, it is easy to see that the savings do not take long to mount and surpass initial costs. The same applies in the green of existing structures.
With butlers, the initial upfront costs of hiring, training, and equipping the team are similarly higher than having no butler department. But assuming the department is doing what butler departments are meant to do (see Hotel Butlers, The Great Service Differentiators), it will increase revenue by a) building relationships that result in repeat visits; b) extra service opportunities that result in i) more charged-for services and ii) happier guests more inclined to make recommendations to others; c) discreet upselling and cross selling because of the opportunity for guest interaction; d) the opportunities for higher rack rates or to add value to existing ones and so differentiate the hotel from the competition.
In summary, paraphrasing Homi Vazifdar, Managing Director of Canyon Equity, LLC on that first workshop panel at the NYU convention, “luxury and green are compatible and both very much needed in hospitality today.” One saves money while meeting the expectations of increasing numbers of travelers at all levels, and the other makes it by attracting clientele who want to be pampered. They are two sides of the same coin—a coin that goes “kaching.”
This article was published in Hotelexecutive.com and various other publications thereafter
Two clients contact you, wanting to arrange their wedding and honeymoon in some suitably exotic location.
Once their wish list has been communicated, you formulate options. One of the options you may want to be thinking with and offering them, is a location that, in addition to everything else, also offers butler service.
Why? Because the butler is the key to providing up-close-and-personal service for the simple reason that he (or she) is there with the guests in their suite, totally dedicated to finding out what they want and providing it, ideally before they even realize they need it. He or she is the one who sees them with their hair down, make-up half on, laughing and (let’s hope not with honeymoon couples) disagreeing strongly over one thing or another. When there’s a little emergency, it is the butler who smoothes frayed nerves, distracts the embarrassed, and deals with whatever went wrong. He becomes the guest’s right-hand man, she the lady-in-waiting who keeps things rolling along (and that can be a challenge in wedding situations, to be sure) and the focus on helping make this the highlight of the guest’s life.
Apart from a total dedication to serving and an understanding about how to provide invisible, anticipatory service and complete discretion, the butler pays attention to the little details that make up the greater whole.
And the butler understands that, once the hooplah and high-action of the wedding are over, the honeymoon phase means the guests need their space more than their butler: the goal then being to anticipate and provide service that is truly invisible, anticipating when the guests will want transport or a picnic basket prepared; servicing their room and providing signature romantic baths and intimate turndowns, flowers and other gifts while the guests are away from their suite. Organizing special recognitions, such as their favorite music being performed by the band during dinner, photographs when they are in a public venue and presenting them with an album on departure, and so on.
Perhaps the best example of the solicitous service expected of a butler is that of a couple celebrating their 25th anniversary. The hotel did not just present them with a complimentary bottle of champagne and a cake, which in itself would have been fine, but is almost the expected, nothing truly special. Instead, they found out what the couple had eaten, drunk, and what music had played at their wedding (same hotel chain, but a different country, and in the days before computer records). When the couple came to dinner, they were ushered to the best table and given the same menu as had been presented at their wedding.
They made their selections, and when something different was served, they did not object: it happened to be their favorite food anyway, and they were quite mellow by then, listening to their favorite music that the band happened to be playing, and sipping on the free champagne. It was only when the main course was served, again, not what they had ordered but some of their favorite dishes, that they suddenly realized what was going on: the hotel was giving them exactly what they had ordered 25 years before. The woman cried. The man was speechless. What was the hotel doing, in truth? Faithfully recreating the happiest moments of the couple’s life. That’s a pretty good strategy for wowing guests.
And it is the same level of detail and pushing beyond the expected that butlers are tasked with. Not all butler departments are created equal, so one resource you can use to determine just what you can expect from a hotel that promises butler service, is the rating of butler service in many of the hotels around the world.
See https://www.modernbutlers.com/standards/rating.aspx
This article was also published in the inaugural quarterly edition of ttgmena luxury in January 2011.
In the best of all possible worlds, people would be rational and compassionate. As this is Planet Earth, a few people walk amongst us who live slightly south of this ideal. Anyone working in private service or the luxury hotel market can probably tell a tale or two about the wealthy they have served, either about how incredibly kind they were, or how challenging. As much as we might wish to enjoy the pleasures and privileges of the wealthy, the status does come with some pitfalls that can catch the wealthy off guard. There is nothing wrong with wealth, but it takes more than admonitions about difficulties negotiating the eyes of needles to point the wealthy, who may be struggling with their power, in the right direction.
By way of illustration, take the case of a certain lady whose manicured, Italianate gardens stretched seemingly to the horizon, just one of the landscapes available to her at the two-dozen estates in her possession. One of the butlers knocked on the door leading to the balcony where we were enjoying tea, the view, and what could have been an equally pleasant conversation. Judging by the poorly disguised franticness of the butler, his halting moves and hunted look, he appeared to be in terror of making a wrong move, one it seemed he knew he would be guilty of no matter which move he made. From the inevitable criticism that followed his clumsy departure, it was plain this lady, in turn, did not trust and certainly did not like her staff. She was frantic about imagined threats to the safety of her children and made their life, and certainly that of the long series of nannies, miserable. As for her husband, he found it expedient to keep himself busy running his businesses most of the time, and this so-privileged couple has since, with predictable acrimony and not so parsimonious alimony, split the estates and staffs and gone their separate ways. When one has everything, it seems so silly not actually to have or enjoy it.
“Domestic service, its defenders have always claimed, is an honorable estate. To be sure, some who took it up were cared for all their lives, honored and even cosseted, and finally laid to rest in the family plot—possibly with a carved attribute, ‘Rare character in these degenerate days.’ Others, the sad and often damp-souled majority, were exploited, snubbed, hectored, and humiliated; and so, whenever a choice of occupation [elsewhere] presented itself, they took it.”
E.S. Turner, What The Butler Saw, 1962
These same employers with revolving doors in their servant quarters can also be found draped over luxury hotels around the world, dispensing their brand of people skills to the consternation of hospitality employees who find themselves caught in crosshairs that need not be.
As the people skills of an employer or a hotel guest have a significant impact on those servicing them, it might be helpful to understand the foibles and frailties of wealthy employers that might make servicing them a tribulation for the brave and tremulous alike. As Emily Post advised in 1922, “Perhaps a servant problem is more often an employer problem. I’m sure it is.”
In considering wealthy people, we can identify two key groups: those who tend to amass great wealth (Wealth Accumulators); and those who ride on their coat tails, including those who inherit great estates and capital (Wealth Dissipaters).
In each category, there exist a) those who are no more capable of recognizing their condition than they are capable either of giving away their wealth or of accumulating it; b) those who recognize their condition but who lack the tools to enter into a better frame of mind; and c) those whose people skills earn them selfless and unquestioning support from those servicing them.
Trouble Makers
Let’s explore Wealth Dissipaters first, focusing on one of their more common shortfalls when new to wealth. When their training, background, and contributions to the familial relationship have been the same essentially as that of the household manager or housekeeper, they find themselves bereft suddenly of a game and raison d’être.
Games are not just played in stadiums, but could be viewed as the basic activity and description of life itself: they give us goals to achieve despite opposition/opponents, they give us problems to focus our attention on solving. If a person lacks problems, if he or she lacks a game, he will invent them just as fast and tenaciously as you please. In the case of an employer newly out of a job, the trick is to find a new game to play, so they do not end up playing painfully tired and tawdry ones.
When a family member swung down the drive to pick up a butler from his employer’s estate one Saturday, a maid in a pinny (apron), carrying her cleaning cloth, rushed out to greet him. Except it was not the maid. It was the lady of the house. The relative had merely arrived in the middle of her chores, which consisted of cleaning the house from top to bottom, paying close attention to those places that had already been thoroughly cleaned by the actual maid: picture the maid and employer chasing each other around the mansion, cleaning in each other’s wake: which, in reality, meant the maid taking care of the employer’s exuberant smears of dried cleaning powder on multiple surfaces that had already been thoroughly cleaned. Wonderful fodder for a cartoon, but not overly efficient or morale-building: The maid at that time lasted six weeks.
Any employer having trouble adjusting to his or her (new) status as lord or lady of the manor could, as a first step, realize they indeed were the lord or lady, and not the cook, the major domo, or whatever. The strength of the employer is in being able to recognize the old game has ended, to have the courage to let go, allow another to take over, and to find a new game to throw themselves into. Weak individuals will hang onto their old game like a threadbare pair of slippers. Yet there are literally more games to invent and play than there are stars in the Milky Way. Sane games involve happiness for self and others. Insane ones involve harm for more and more people. That’s a simple but workable rule of thumb.
Closely aligned for Wealth Dissipaters, in that the lack of a game is the problem in part, is the happy fact that they are wealthy and do not have to lift a finger. Privileged women in the 19th Century could go to their grave without ever having made a cup of tea or put on their own clothing. The concept of morale is relevant here: the enthusiasm and confidence that comes from demonstrating competence while producing a product or service or achieving a goal.
Wealth Dissipaters who lack a game and goal are not driven or required to produce anything and so are listless, bored—troublemakers, in short, for themselves and others. Being denied work, one soon enough finds oneself incapable of working at all. “But Mummy, I am boooooooored,” is a refrain commonly heard anywhere a young child’s often clumsy contributions have been brushed aside too many times by busy adults. Where he or she subsequently and persistently has been denied a productive role in society or roles in games that interest, we find the petrie dish of juvenile delinquency. This ennui pushed into adulthood results in the abandonment of all efforts and sense of belonging in the idle rich.
There is no greater trap than trying to avoid work. This is what defines a criminal: unable to work, so he has to steal, whether by simple bludgeoning or complex schemes, whether of a single dollar or a trillion here or there. The irony of it all is that it is far harder and less satisfying to avoid work than it is to roll up one’s sleeves and dig in to something with gusto.
Anyone who has tried to interest a child who is thoroughly bored, no doubt knows it will not happen with exhortations alone. One has to dig in and find where interest took a dive and rehabilitate that interest, or find new things that the person actually could be interested in. Couching the project in terms of helping someone else, give them a purpose exterior to themselves might galvanize them into motion under their own volition.
What games, otherwise, do such people find themselves playing? They tend towards negating whatever they see (and cannot contribute to); and social intercourse characterized by strained façades that thinly mask backstabbing intent, where a real liking for others and life is sadly just out of reach. At the higher-end of this scale “How do you do?” is expressed, leaving unexpressed, “I don’t care how you are doing; you are such a bore, how can I get away (or whatever)?” At the bottom of the scale we find no interest expressed at all for other people…much like an object expresses no interest: when was the last time your car enquired how you were doing?
The likes of Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves stories, Arthur in Arthur, and the Prince of Wales in Blackadder characterize just such idle rich, with nothing worthwhile to do, but they are the harmless types. Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy provides a mild example of the type of employer for whom time sits heavily and staffs suffer as a result.
What drives Wealth Dissipaters to such murky depths of human understanding and caring? They are bored, they have a low opinion of themselves, their activity and contribution levels to society are in the basement, and they famously suffer from a high incidence of neurosis. But why is this still the case, despite centuries, even millennia of remonstrated failures and demonstrable grief, and proverbs to guide such as “The devil finds work for idle hands.” There are at least five forces at work that conspire to drive the wealthy up a cul-de-sac/deadend:
Only Robots Need Apply
Let’s focus now on the key issues with Wealth Accumulators when it comes to poor people skills. Where they have trouble with employees is the point they lose touch with their own spiritual nature and think of life, including mankind, as an agglomeration of atoms and random, unthinking forces. It might surprise to know that this opinion has only been in vogue wherever psychology has spread its influence over the last 130 years, based on some severely faulty logic: a professor of psychology (“the study of the soul”), announced somewhat ironically that because nerve channels went to the brain, the brain must be the mind, and that man was therefore nothing more than a collection of atoms like any other animal. The spirit mankind had conceived to overlay the managing of these atoms over the millennia was thereby scientifically proven not to exist. If the logic sounds slightly off kilter, maybe transposing it into computer parlance may highlight why the professor’s initial observation does not justify the conclusion. Imagine a computer (the body) sitting on a desk without any operating system or programs loaded (mind), and no end user (spirit) to use it. The concept works no more in the computer world than it does in real life, and if a hypothesis does not work in practice, then it has little validity. Unfortunately, however, the idea has become widespread and when used as a model, is bad news for human relationships, especially for staff who generally have to keep their own counsel while an employer or guest throws a tantrum or carries out a strategy based on the idea that staff are as disposable as diapers or last year’s models.
How does this materialistic point of view manifest? Being driven in a serious way by the misconception that happiness results from collecting possessions and employing an army of hot and cold running maids and butlers, one falls foul of a natural law that is well understood by savvy ladies looking for partners: That pushing too hard and seriously in one direction has the opposite effect. “Playing hard to get” is an intelligent response borne, no doubt, of trial and error, that will generally result in the men giving chase. Alternatively, if a lady is not playing hard to get and a man chases her, he will drive her away. Wanting possessions, one chases too hard after them and so fails to find the happiness that they cannot deliver, because it is the magic of one’s own creativity and lightness of spirit that brings happiness. This is certainly true when one’s “people possessions” do not sit and bark on cue, but turn out to have unwanted opinions and feelings that spoil things unnecessarily.
Which brings up the other goal of such employers and guests: to control others based on a lack of trust that they will perform or behave well. Whenever this philosophy is instituted nationally, police states and all they represent for the finer parts of mankind result.
For a rare glimpse at the mindset of such a person, consider the words of Zbignew Brzezinski, founder of the Trilateral Commission, when he addressed Chatham House (the British counterpart of the American Council on Foreign Relations) on November 17, 2008: “In early times, it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill a million people. Today, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people.” He was lamenting the difficulty of controlling populations who can vote and access the Internet. That the strategy of controlling others is self-defeating and has never worked (for some reason, individuals rebel overtly or covertly as much against being controlled as being killed) does not seem to put off such wealthy individuals from trying.
For the less one trusts others and the more one tries to control them, the more they are pushed into criminality: the pivotal point where a criminal becomes hardened, is where he commits one crime too many and realizes he cannot trust himself to police himself and so quits trying. The criminal rehabilitation group, Criminon, uses this understanding to return self respect and trust to the criminal. As a result, Criminon enjoy the same success rate (70-80% never return to prison) as other programs experience a failure rate (70-80% returning to prison).
A Better Strategy for the Wealthy
It might help such wealthy individuals to realize that other people do exist, they are real, and they are not the programmable robots many employers have sought (because they failed to make the servants and their operating climate sufficiently intelligent to function sensibly). A Lady H. kept a mind-numbing list of actions to do at a precise time each day, such as when to draw which curtain. She had obviously compiled the list in an effort to counteract the omissions she had experienced with former and current employees. A tour of her estate revealed examples of obvious negligence, such as her own bed unmade at 5.30 p.m. Only two bedrooms and beds needed to be serviced in the various buildings on the property, yet she had several maids scurrying around the house looking worried and busy. She at the same time bemoaned the lack of quality staff and their inability to do the simple actions they were paid to execute. The Lord and Lady in question were so convinced all servants were robots that they were unable to see their own attitude and approach to handling their staff had created that very robot culture.
If staff members were instructed in the requirements of the house, given principles and rules that they could think with, as well as checklists of actions to undertake (perfectly valid), they would undoubtedly fulfill their duties. They would be able to observe and evaluate different situations as they cropped up, and resolve them intelligently. If employers expected the staff to take pride in their work and left them free to do so without continual interruption and recriminations, validated them for their good works, then the staff would grow gradually into a happy, caring and efficient workforce. They would show initiative within the boundaries set by the employer, and provide the employer with real assistance. It is true that in some cultures, individuals have been so beaten down as to become like robots, but even they, with much extra care, if one really has no choice but to employ them, can be nurtured back to self-determined action.
It comes down to the difference between owning a slave, controlling a servant, employing a staff member, or nurturing a self-determined and responsible artist: for art is not just on a canvas—it can be defined as the quality of the communication and product produced in any sphere of life. And when we talk wealth, we surely imply quality in all things as a desirable standard.
One other turbulence some Wealth Accumulators leave in their wake from the good ship “all is matter and man is an animal,” is a certain tightness of wallet that is not justified by the means of the individual. Their problem is that they have fallen for their own line of scarcity: Capitalism in its current form is based on creating scarcities (most easily out of necessities, otherwise out of what people can be made to believe are necessities), and even using fear of scarcity to increase demand for one’s now “scarce” product or service—as opposed to good sense in governance leading to abundances for the benefit of all.
Some wealthy individuals actually believe there can be scarcity, based not on their lack of accumulated wealth, but their realization that they cannot create anything, and so come into a frame of mind where they must horde what they have. One employer with a beachside mansion insisted on importing his own Filipino maid at wages lower than the local going rate, giving her an on-property room literally the size of a one-car garage, and charging rent for it that consumed a good part of her wages. It takes no real strength or skill to wrest concessions from the weak, but such cheap victories seem to make some people happy even though the payback is service begrudgingly given. The deeper liability for the employers being that, lacking real creativity, they focus on protecting their possessions and maintaining the status quo, which includes stopping initiatives of even their own staff to improve things. Additionally, they want, they possess, but they can’t appreciate or experience real joy any more than their Bentley can experience joy. The real joy in life comes from creating, sharing, and achieving goals with other people, not in becoming the objects one desires.
One of the happier (and richest) men in the world works in a small office off the kitchen and knows that he depends on his employees as much as they depend on him: he and his wife are deeply immersed in causes and work incessantly to create things and improve conditions. Their staff is busy running the estate for the employers, well looked after, and loyal. The only capital one has really with staff is their willingness to serve. Demolish that with inconsiderate exchanges and one has employees who will not go the distance, let alone the extra mile.
Conversely, the power enjoyed by the wealthy can be used in the understanding that real richness in life comes from friendship and positive accomplishment. The relationship of service is like any other alliance—two adults agreeing to bond in a certain way because they have the freedom of choice and the dignity and skills needed to play the roles in the game: One chooses to serve, the other to be served, both understanding the relationship to be reciprocal and professional.
In summary, where there is friction and staff turnover in an estate, where hotel employees are rebuffed and discouraged from providing good service, the real target is the fundamental weakness that is making the fortunate wealthy frustratingly unhappy: the lack of a game and purpose in life for those who are idle; or the idea that other people do not exist or matter for those who are succeeding in the game of acquiring more and more. The truth is that current cultures point the wealthy up a cul-de-sac/dead-end; so this little article placed discreetly in the hands of those who are capable of changing, can go a long way to enlightening minds and improving conditions. A simple acknowledgement or thank-you gift, a smile rather than a Cheneyesque snarl, a request rather than an imperious order, these all add up both for the staff as well as the employer, into a whole new relationship, making each party a keeper.
This article also appeared in the September 2009 issues of HospitalityTrend.com, HotelNewsResource.com, Hotel-Online.com, 4Hoteliers,com, Hospitalitynet.com, MoneySpeaks.co.uk and Airline News Resource.