I sometimes feel a flurry of hope when a really sharp-looking hotel opens in Australia promising service levels and appointments exceeding previous expectations. So it was recently, when Perth's COMO The Treasury opened its doors offering that bit extra in an "elegant and restful base from which to explore the wilder lures of Western Australia".
But can it - and any other newbies - deliver? After all, Australia's hospitality industry doesn't have a particularly impressive track record at providing the standard of service high-end Australian travellers have come to expect after truly five-star stays offshore.  
Guests would be happy to pay through the nose for that level of luxury but it's a common complaint that they just can't get it here, with hotel and restaurant staff equally guilty of either not caring, being too loquacious or simply lacking deference.
One very well-travelled American friend of mine has this view: "Whatever's considered the best hotel in Australia, it's a bad five-star. They call it five-star and they tick all the boxes but they don't actually follow through."
Ultimately, it's about delivering the experience, he says.
"The word is 'service' - to serve. Australians don't have that in their psyche," he says.

Locals spend big overseas
It's a view broadly shared among frustrated Australians who are more than prepared to spend big to seek it offshore.   

 To be fair, though, very few truly five-star brands have properties in this country, with the exceptions being Four Seasons and Langham. The Ritz-Carlton plans to open a property in Perth in 2018.

 Meanwhile, everyone else is jostling to capture a larger share of the growing number and changing composition of international travellers taking advantage of our foundering currency. Tourists from greater China, for example, recently overtook New Zealanders travelling to Australia for the first time, according to a CommSec report. 

 "With Chinese tourism rising at 20 per cent [a year], further history-making days aren't far away," says CommSec's chief economist Craig James.

 The Peninsula Hotels group knows a thing or two about customer service generally and what the Chinese want specifically. But it hasn't made its way Down Under yet. But it does capture a good number of our wealthy tourists at its 10 properties in other parts of the world. Australian travellers are among the top 5 per cent of guests at the group's Philippines property and in the top 3 per cent at Beverly Hills.

Women run the show
It's been a smart strategy, apparently, for the group to assign so many of its general-manager roles to women - 40 per cent of its properties are run by them.
 I caught up with one of them recently - Sonja Vodusek, MD of The Peninsula Manila - while she was in Melbourne as part of The Peninsula's annual roadshow designed to keep The Peninsula Hotels brand front of mind for Australia's high-end travellers.
 Formerly of Yarrawonga, in north-east Victoria, Vodusek is about to move to The Peninsula Tokyo where she says she'll become the first-ever female managing director of a luxury hotel in not just the city but the whole of Japan.

 It's a long way from her training at the Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School in Sydney, so I figured she'd have a good handle on what Australian hotels need to do to lift their game.

 In her Manila hotel, she's organised for guests to have nightly baths filled with Evian water or goat's milk, and had the lobby orchestra play regular guests' favourite songs as they enter.

 "We have a lot of high-expectation travellers because, in their lives, they have all the care factors - the butlers, the drivers - and when they come to a hotel, we have to provide that," Vodusek says.

Service very casual
While she loves coming home to Australia, she admits the service here is "very casual".

 "A lot of people in the field are university students using hospitality as a conduit to other things," she says. "In Asia, it's their job, their life, their career. Service is a religion, it's innate, it's bred in them.

 In the US, on the other hand, it can be considered a business - the more money you pay, the better service you get - and in Europe, it's a style thing. 
 "It's their profession, not a way to get to something else," she says.

 Vodusek believes Australia's service model needs to improve to remain international, but it should still reflect our country, our lifestyle, our people.

 "It can have attitude, but it's still refreshing," she says. "And you have to take the good with the bad."

 But "training, training, training" is the only way to go.

 "I think establishments really have to invest in their people, and the leaders really have to show them the way, walk the talk. It can have an immediate impact."

 That's pretty well the approach taken at The Langham Melbourne where managing director Ben Sington?????? says his whole business is driven by service. 

Guest needs stored
"Basically, you build up a system, you create the culture then the staff go out and do it," Sington says. "That's how a top hotel delivers - through trained staff."

 The Langham has a range of systems in place to make sure its service is top-notch and measurable.

 "We train our staff to the world's highest hotel standard so Forbes, and companies that audit world hotels, can rate it," he says.

 Reservation staff are trained to establish guest needs so their preferences can be delivered, with the information stored in the group's guest experience management system (GEMS) and shared with all Langham hotels so guest needs can be in place before they arrive.

 "Our brand says we are trying to extend intuitive service with poise and luxury to build great memories. That's our mission, that's what we try to do."

 Sington says there are few hotels in the country that can match what The Langham is doing.

 "It's up to the brands whether they want to make money or whether they want to do service," he says. "Our philosophy is, you deliver the service, you make money. There is no compromise, we have to have quality no matter what happens."

 Which sounds like a sensible approach wherever you are, even Perth. We'll watch with interest.