Is a vacation butler luxury or ludicrous? 🛎️
As long as you're offering ...
“Enjoy our wide range of premium services, including international cuisine, personalized customer service, butler service, and many other top-quality services.”
Why do I need a butler? With a week booked at an all-inclusive resort, I can waddle my way from the buffet to the bar to the cabana on my own. I’m an independent traveler! But having been down this road of excess before, I know my butler will come in handy for one specific task: booking a table at the elusive reservation-only restaurant L’Essence, promising “nouvelle cuisine” and a live pianist.
After checking in and downloading the app, I immediately text E, my assigned butler. “Hello, so excited to be here! Can you arrange a table of 9 for Tuesday night at the French place? We’re celebrating a birthday. Thank you!” (A colleague once told me that exclamation points imply casual friendliness. I’m not sure I agree, but I succumb to the pressure.)
“Hello. Welcome. When can we meet?” E replies.
After some back and forth, I agree to return to the reception area for a face-to-face, when I’d rather be at the swim-up bar drinking a bananamama. E gives me a fist bump, whips out a Post-it size notebook and pen, and meticulously records my table request as well as a desire for a massage booking several days later. Or at least I think that’s what he’s doing. They may be squiggles.
And so it goes for the next 72 hours. Questions met with questions. Random appearances at my suite, asking if I need anything. That tiny notebook. My calm reiteration for a dinner reservation and massage (neither came to fruition).
Our merry band of friends, tipsy on sunshine and the ridiculous of it all, commiserate on our failed attempts to spoil ourselves with unnecessary trappings of anticipatory service. We eventually secure a coveted table at L’Essence, and upon arrival, the pianist plucks out Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
IMC takeaway: I’ve been told I have champagne tastes and a beer budget. That tracks. But when I splurge for Veuve-Clicquot, is a flute too much to ask?