Want to reap the rewards of Charleston’s booming tourism industry while safeguarding the local lifestyle? You may want to summon the butler.
Gary Williams, principal of the London-based British Butler Institute and a celebrated service guru, has next-leveled the art of hospitality everywhere from Hamptons estates to superyachts to world-renowned hotels (not to mention A-List stars like Lady Gaga). From June 22 to June 25, he was in Charleston to hold a training conference on how staffers could up their game.
Meanwhile, also consider recent recommendations from Bloomberg Associates, the philanthropic consulting service founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The city of Charleston announced the suggestions through its new Responsible Tourism Initiative.
Livability, meet livelihood
Grousing about tourists is a longstanding local pastime, as much a part of Lowcountry life as shad roe or rooting for the RiverDogs.
But let’s not toss out the cash cow with the horse carriages. The ideal would be to strike a balance between livability and livelihood, one that is both resident-friendly and economically robust.
Hence recommendations from the Bloomberg project: to target high-spending cultural travelers; to highlight the region’s Black cultural heritage; and to cast a wider geographical net into neighborhoods to do so.
Suggestions for Charleston also home in on funding suggestions, a topic gaining more purchase still given the South Carolina Arts Commission’s recent freeze of $3 million of arts funding due to objections of allotments to LGBTQ+ organizations.
Targeting high-spending cultural travelers is already in motion. The College of Charleston’s Office of Tourism Analysis reports that in 2024, an unprecedented economic impact of $14 billion was up 7% from the year before, with only 1.2% growth in visitors. Tourism today also represents almost 25% of regional sales and sustains tens of thousands of jobs — 54,900 in 2024, the highest ever.
Artful lodgers
The cultural sector gets a prime spotlight from Bloomberg, which certainly tracks: For generations, arts and tourism have been well-matched bedfellows.
In the 1920s, visitors learned of the city from “The Charleston” dance craze. During the Charleston Renaissance of 1915 to 1940, paintings and prose illuminated the area’s unparalleled allure, including DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel that inspired Porgy and Bess.
In the 1970s, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley Jr., College of Charleston President Ted Stern and Italian composer and festival founder Gian Carlo Menotti dreamed up Spoleto Festival USA. Its economic impact today nears $30 million annually from outside visitors.
Peak performance
But back to butlering, a skill that would certainly come in handy to attract those high-end visitors.
Williams was in town at the invitation of Lawson Roberts, CEO and executive producer of Holy City Affairs, a luxury concierge company that creates Lowcountry experiences for visitors. “Luxury today is no longer about marble lobbies or thread counts,” Roberts told the Charleston City Paper “It’s noticing the guest’s needs before they’re ever spoken. It’s creating ease. I’ve said for years that luxury is not loud. It is seen, it is felt, it is noticed.”
During the Charleston training session, Williams taught principles of the institute’s five golden rules that encompass more than 400 modules. Many transcend traditional butler service to delve into emotional intelligence, anticipation, communication and gratitude.
And it’s nothing less than an art form in its own right. Williams frequently underscored showmanship as an essential part of the job, whether played out in individual comportment or in creating an evocative cocktail tray.
But with all its protocol and some intel on high tea, offering luxurious experiences is not about stuffiness. The goal instead is to offer the tools to cultivate relaxed, confident professionals.
“If someone wants to be served coffee in a plastic cup on the floor, we’ll serve them beautifully on the floor with a plastic cup. We’re not stuffy,” Williams said.
Consider the getup. While proper attire doesn’t necessarily entail donning a morning coat (as Williams does), and whether it’s the black suit jacket or silk sari or Bermuda shorts, neatness and uniformity count.
Body language is key as well. Williams guided trainees through choreographed gestures and stances that were almost balletic, demonstrating how to stand at a slight, nonconfrontational angle from patrons; to point with a full palm, thumb down; to pose with the right hand over the left; to put some pep in the step.
Then there is the all-important script. Attendees rehearsed rejoinders designed to delight, and at times, diffuse. When asked for a price, standout servers never speak of cost; they speak of value. When confronting an irate guest, they take measures including apologizing, listening and offering a solution.
With all the language and pointers, Williams also underscored authenticity. That’s something highlighted as well by Bloomberg in its recommendation to focus on Charleston’s Black cultural heritage.
Keeping it real threads the butler’s ethos of discipline and detail, empathy and positivity, which all come together in a level of service that separates the passable from the exceptional.
It works for Bloomberg’s recommendations, too. Charleston’s time-tested convergence of hospitality and culture plays out in this best-of-both-worlds plan. In short, there may well still be time to find ways to serve our Charleston benne wafers — and enjoy our lives here, too.
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