Message from the Chairman

by Steven Ferry

Butlers have been serving the wealthy and powerful for over a millennium but hotel butlers are a recent phenomenon. Apart from one or two butlers in the luxury hotels that appeared in England, Europe, and the US starting in 1865, butlers only came into being in hotels in 1982.

Until the publication of Hotel Butlers, The Great Service Differentiators in 2004, only isolated job-descriptions defined the position. In the 15 years since, the hospitality markets have changed considerably and technology has leapt into the forefront; and the Institute has trained and consulted butlers and other staff in about 200 four- and five-star hotels and resorts, as well as cruise ships, greatly expanding the understanding as well as the duties of the “hospitality butler.” The obvious benefits of having a butler in hotels meant resorts, cruise ships, airlines, and even hospitals started to introduce butler service, too. As a result, a new book entitled “Hospitality Butlers” has just been published in order to reflect the new reality.

Who knows where the hospitality butler will be in another 15 years, but for sure, this book will serve you well until then, whether your aim is to be the best hospitality butler you can be, or you are looking for a template to establish a butler presence or department in a facility that you want to provide superior service.

For those thinking outside the box for the next way to “wow” and serve their guests, clients, patients, passengers, etc., this book is a good starting point, for we maintain the thread of superior service developed and enshrined in the butler profession in its servicing of royalty, nobility, the wealthy, and powerful over the last millennium—surely the most demanding of “clients.”

The Institute is dedicated to raising service standards by broadly disseminating the mindset and superior service expertise of that time-honored, quintessential service provider, the British Butler, updated with modern people- skills, and adapted to the needs of modern employers and guests in staffed homes, luxury hotels, resorts, spas, retirement communities, jets, yachts & cruise ships around the world.