The White Lotus: Holidays of rich and famous revealed as writer details how world’s wealthiest take a break

Where the pool is perfection, the service six-star and the sky always blue: it is hardly how the other half live, it is how the half of one per cent holiday.

Award-winning TV drama The White Lotus, set in the world’s most luxurious hotels where the breaks of the super-rich guests seldom go to plan, has returned for a second series. And viewers are again being taken behind the scenes of the admittedly fictional havens of the world’s millionaires.

Set this time in the glorious San Domenico Palace in Taormina, Sicily – a Four Seasons hotel, like the thinly disguised White Lotus resort in Hawaii in the first series – the dark comedy drama is a small-screen testament to how money may not be able to buy happiness but can certainly get a suite in some of the world’s most palatial hideaways while waiting for happiness to book in.

The everyday opulence is a perk of the job for travel writer Tessa Williams, author of Hotel Of The Stars, who divides her time between her family’s country estate in Aberdeenshire and her research visits to the globe’s most iconic and luxurious retreats.

She is also a contributor to Channel Five TV show The World’s Greatest Hotels. Just back from her latest round of research in resorts like Burgenstock high above Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne, Turkey’s Macakizi in Bodrum, iconic Pera Palace in Istanbul and the Royal Mansour in Marrakech, she said: “The White Lotus is beautifully done. It’s a well-put-together reflection of life and work in a luxury hotel; that thing of making sure staff come across as unobtrusive and barely noticeable while at the same time wholly attentive and delivering on every single request, no matter how madcap or unreasonable. These guests have a lot of money and they can and do demand whatever they want, whenever and as quickly as they want, and know they will get it.

“At the Four Seasons art deco Paris landmark the George V Hotel, in the Golden Triangle just off the Champs-Elysees, one guest demanded to have a dinner party at 3am. He wanted it set up in grand style on a big table for half a dozen people. It seemed a bit much.

“Other guests at the luxurious Beverly Hills Hotel in LA – where many of the staff have worked for decades – wanted a wedding for their two four-year-old Collie dogs, with a minister, catering and special wedding outfits. The dogs married in the Crystal Ballroom (the bitch wore traditional white) and they honeymooned in one of the garden suites. The total cost was about $15,000.

“I was at the luxury Burgenstock resort and hotel in September, high up in the mountains and only accessible by funicular. It’s where Audrey Hepburn lived and married and Sean Connery shot the James Bond movie Goldfinger. It’s beautiful with the lakes below and cows grazing in mountain pastures, traditional cowbells dangling from their necks making their distinctive jingle-jangle sound.

“Some American guests came down to reception and asked staff to turn down the volume on the cow sounds. They didn’t realise the sound came from real cows. It was ridiculous.”

According to Williams, who is working on a second book due out next autumn, crazy demands are nothing new to hotel staff. She said: “When Salvador Dali used to stay at Le Meurice in Paris in the 1960s he would take his pet ocelot, Babou – a wild cat – and demand that a member of staff walk him, which was a bit of a mad request. More recently, and perhaps more reasonably, at Hotel Martinez in Cannes singer Shakira wanted all the blinds down and no light for the whole time she was staying there.”

The hotel connoisseur said high-end hospitality personnel are trained to handle challenging situations but confessed it must be tough. “It’s not an easy job but these people always seem to be loyal and stay a long time at the hotels they serve,” she said.

And, unlike in The White Lotus, not all are encouraged to melt obsequiously into the background. At the Macakizi in Bodrum, described as a “laid-back temple of luxury in the Mediterranean since the 1970s”, she mistook beach manager “Richard” for a paying client. Williams admitted: “I thought he was a guest because he was confident, tall and glamorous with long grey hair. I interviewed the owner, Sahir Erozan, on the hotel’s super yacht as we headed to its private island and he told me that ‘Richard’ was actually called Abraham, but was given the nickname because people thought he looked like Richard Gere.

“The Macakizi is cool in an understated way. The owner is very private and wouldn’t tell me anything about his clients. That’s why people, especially those who are famous, go back there. But other guests told me they were sitting with Katy Perry, who had been at the next table, and that Kate Moss was there and was just so normal and didn’t come across as a supermodel. It is a big party place. I witnessed some of the guests enjoying happy hour and dancing on the tables, and not just people in their 20s, they were middle-aged and upwards.

“I found the staff friendly and would talk to guests on such a level that they would not be patronised.”

The social satire is set at an exclusive Sicilian resort and follows the exploits of various guests and employees over the span of a week.

It was a similar story during her stay at the Royal Mansour in Marrakech in April where Williams found herself rubbing shoulders with movie director Guy Ritchie and Rocco, 22, the son he shares with his ex-wife, queen of pop Madonna.

Staff at the King of Morocco-owned hotel, one of the most beautiful in the world and crafted by more than 1,500 local artisans as an ode to traditional Moroccan architecture, ensured that Williams – like its A-list clients – arrived in style.

“We were met at the airport by the hotel’s gold Bentley,” she recalled. “It was an amazing and exceptional place. The staff were totally attentive but not subservient. If you asked them to take a photo, they’d ask you if you’d like them to be in it. Their personalities shine through.

“I sat beside Guy Ritchie and his wife who were talking loudly about Madonna. It was interesting to be in the midst of that. I said hello and asked them how long they were staying and they were friendly. The next day we saw Rocco and his friend and they were very chatty. The family seemed very good with the staff too. Not everything is how it is portrayed in the show.

“Luxury hotels employ consummate professionals. They have toughed it out to get those plum jobs. A girl I met working at the Burgenstock resort gave up a role in the Swiss tourism office in New York to go there. From the manager to the person who cleans the room, they know they are working at the best and they do their best.”

Hotel Of The Stars by Tessa Williams, Roads Publishing