Charleston just brought in Margaret Thatcher's former butler to teach the help.
Gary Williams, director of the British Butler Institute, has worked for the Iron Lady, Nicolas Cage, and One Direction. This month he flew to the Lowcountry to train the staff of Holy City Affairs, a luxury concierge outfit that represents more than 1,200 high-end properties across the region and is onboarding 18 more boutique hotels.
His curriculum is exactly as extravagant as it sounds. 467 modules. The staff will get through 23 of them over four days. The lessons run from handling difficult guests to how, precisely, to hand someone a pen. “You take the pen out and you would hold it with three fingers at the top,” Williams told the Post & Courier. “The pen would be open, and if there's a logo, the logo will be facing the guest.”
Why here, why now? Because the numbers demand it. Charleston pulled a record 7.9 million visitors in 2025 and a record $14.3 billion economic impact, and the visitors keep skewing higher-end, longer stays, bigger spends.
Exhibit A: The Cooper, the new waterfront hotel where off-season rooms start at $895, and the presidential suite runs $11,000 to $15,700 a night depending on the season.
Holy City Affairs CEO Lawson Roberts thinks Charleston's service actually slipped after the pandemic while the money kept climbing. “It seems that it's really just gone by the wayside,” he said, while demand for high-end experiences hasn't cooled at all. “The luxury market is alive and well.”
Whatever you make of a city that needs an imported butler to hand out pens correctly, this is the tell. When the training budget goes transatlantic, the luxification isn't coming. It's here.
Cry when you leave, as Williams puts it. Because you're leaving.
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