The world’s most discerning travellers have stopped wanting flawless service. The Post-Luxury

Shift is a field guide to what they want instead — and to the discipline of giving it to them.

The reservation was secured at the restaurant that doesn’t take reservations. The car arrived four minutes early. The table was the one by the window. And a week later, the guest cannot remember what they ate. This is not a failure of service. It is the quiet exhaustion of a form of luxury that has run out of room to improve. When every hotel is excellent, excellence stops being a differentiator. When every guest has already been everywhere, another beautiful destination is simply another beautiful destination. The most discerning travellers in the world noticed this before our industry did. They have stayed at every five-star property, eaten at every three-star restaurant, seen the sights and bought the goods. And increasingly they are asking a question that ought to unsettle us: so what?

Written for butlers, concierges, guest relations and experience managers, villa and residence staff — and for the general managers and owners responsible for them. If you have ever executed an evening perfectly and watched the guest forget it, this book is written to you.

Josephine Ive has spent more than twenty-five years in luxury guest service and is the author of Achieving Excellence in Guest Service. She is the founder of Magnums Academy and the creator of the Experience Curator Certification. The method in this book grew out of an observation made on the floor rather than in a classroom: that the guests who were hardest to impress were not asking for more service. They were asking for something the profession had no vocabulary for.