Message from the Chairman

by Steven Ferry

Last month’s message acknowledging the silent majority of butlers who quietly go about their business, rather than expressing their opinions about their former employers in public, was appreciated by many in the profession, some of the responses being noted in this edition’s Letters to the Editor. It is encouraging for the integrity and future of our profession that so many reaffirmed their commitment to upholding the standards.

The chairman has recently written a series of three articles on checking standards in hotels and resorts, with the notion that they could be improved — if for no other reason than the big players in the Quality Assurance industry still do not include standards for hotel butlers, even though 400+ luxury properties around the world now offer butler service. The first article in this series was published last month in various online venues, originally in Hotel Business Review.

Otherwise, plenty of interesting material in this newsletter, including how to clean candlesticks in the 21st Century, and the way our predecessors addressed the problem a couple of centuries ago. The observation that silver-cleaning duties for butlers is decreasing in modern times is what prompted the ongoing column on “The Butlers Speak”, to find out exactly what butlers are doing these days.

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.