At Thailand’s Real White Lotus Hotel, Where the Ultrarich Get Coddled
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(Have to admit, I have not seen any of the show and actually would have never hear of it, but ran into a guy in BKK who was one of the directors)
https://nymag-blog.livejournal.com/36855971.html?
At the Four Seasons Koh Samui, a five-star hotel overlooking the Gulf of Thailand, staff study guests like spies watching their marks. Their research goes beyond the usual notes on allergies and coffee orders. “I know everything,” says Hannes Schneider, the hotel’s handsome, six-foot-six Austrian resort manager. “I know when you arrive, what kind of car you have. I have a picture of you. I know if you’ve stayed at other Four Seasons. If I call up my buddy, I know what you’ve done on a daily basis, good and bad.” Schneider, like the rest of the hotel’s management team, wears breezy linen and a stack of energy-stone bracelets, a relaxed, island-y look at odds with his management style, which he calls “relentless.” His employees — an interconnected web of bellboys, cleaners, waitstaff, supervisors — are in constant communication about guest movements to anticipate their needs or simply to greet them by name (“guest-name use is key”). “You are on permanent surveillance,” says Schneider, fixing me with his unwavering, ice-blue stare. “Whatever you say, whatever you do will be observed. And judged.”
The hotel, on the Thai resort island of Koh Samui, is the setting of the third season of The White Lotus, the social satire from writer-director Mike White. Previous seasons have also filmed at Four Seasons, an upscale hotel chain famous for serving guests “hand and foot,” as one former visitor put it. And the brand does feel like a suitable partner for the show, which features privileged travelers terrorizing hotel staff and fellow tourists with their grotesque, spoiled behavior.
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His employees — an interconnected web of bellboys, cleaners, waitstaff, supervisors — are in constant communication about guest movements to anticipate their needs or simply to greet them by name (“guest-name use is key”). “You are on permanent surveillance,” says Schneider, fixing me with his unwavering, ice-blue stare. “Whatever you say, whatever you do will be observed. And judged.”
Sounds relaxing!
