This butler, serving billionaires, ensures that the most extravagant desires of his rich customers are satisfied. But, sometimes, their whims come close to the absurd, as evidenced by this anecdote to a lunch …
In the very closed world of ultra-luxury hotels and personalized service for wealthy customers, certain figures in the shadow embody discreet excellence. Jean-Jacques is one of them. Majordoma by classical training, he accompanies the greatest fortunes on the planet in their trips and their stays, taking care at every moment to make their experience an absolute parenthesis of comfort, fluidity and pleasure. “We do help with the person, we are Mr. Comfort. The goal is that we become essential,” he explains in the program Legend by Guillaume Pley.
Well beyond the standards of the five-star hotel industry, Jean-Jacques is part of the demanding tradition of French service: invisible, precise, and always three steps in front. He anticipates desires, coordinates providers, secures logistics. Whether in a villa in Cap Ferrat, a yacht moored in the Maldives or a private sequel to Aspen, nothing is left to chance. “We plan everything, we always have to have one step ahead. We arrive at a place, the logistics have been set up, we have prepared everything.” Everything is planned … “This mode of service embodies the luxury trip in its most absolute form: mobile, fluid, and perfectly orchestrated. Jean-Jacques does not only offer accommodation or a table, he composes a 360 ° experience, designed to meet without limit expectations.
“It’s the unexpected every day, we have no limit,” he says. Every moment must be unique. Each situation, controlled. This level of service, inspired by the greatest palaces, is also that of private residences, jets, confidential pensions. And sometimes it gives rise to surreal scenes. In Ibiza, during a lunch in a renowned beach restaurant, the addition quickly reaches peaks: “We are at 30,000, 40,000 euros of addition quickly”.
However, it was the very logic of the gesture that surprised Jean-Jacques. “They are completely lit, they will take you 150 oysters,” he recalls. Not to taste them, but for a quirky gesture: “I want to give them freedom!” replies the customer. It was then that he began to “swing” the oysters in the sea. A gesture as absurd as it is insufficient, especially when we understand the situation: “they were open in the crushed ice set”, therefore already condemned as the butler said … “Sometimes it goes too far”, he admits. But in this world where the budget is never a constraint, each whim becomes reality. “They are like us. They like to mess around, they like to have fun,” he said. The difference? The level of means. “We, there are times when we hold back. We do: ‘Oulah this one, she will cost dear my c*nnerie’. They, there is always one who will add behind, it never stops.”
This testimony lifts the veil on an unknown facet of the high -end trip: that where the service does not follow, but precedes. Where each trip becomes an extreme comfort staging. Where the staff are not simply trained, but choreographed.
