The Life of a Hotel Butler in Macau

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the growing corps of butlers working at top-end hotels in Macau, Hong Kong and mainland China, offering a level of service most of us probably associate with an aristocratic life that’s now decades or centuries in the past. And yes, there are Jeeves references.

Josephine Ive, the English-born hospitality guru behind Australia’s Magnums Butlers, a school for budding Jeeveses, says there has been a significant increase in demand for butlers across China from both private residences and hotels.

“There are now many more millionaires in China than before. [They] are traveling a lot more and are being exposed to different levels of service,” says Ms. Ive, a former chef and lady butler who once cooked for the British royal family. “It’s very hard to put figures on the growing demand for butlers in China, but almost all the top-end hotels are including butler services now,” she says. Many of Magnums’s graduates go on to work for high-end hotels across Asia; corporations and yachts are also a source of demand.

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