‘Guests claim they’ve got food poisoning to get a discount’: The weird world of the luxury travel doctor

Founder of DoctorCall Dr Charles Levinson pioneered the concept of a private visiting doctor service

No one enjoys getting ill, but it is doubly unwelcome when you happen to also be on holiday – not to mention bitterly ironic. Why now, on that expensive, longed-for vacation, wasting precious leave days, and not in the costless comfort of your own home – or, better still, on the company’s time and sick-pay?

For those who can afford to travel and sleep in premium style, however, the bitter pill of “leisure sickness” – the name given by Dutch psychologist Ad Vingerhoets to the unfortunate practice of falling ill as soon as we stop work – comes with a more palatable coating. There are, after all, worse places to be unwell than in a five-star suite at one of the world’s finest hotels – or, for that matter, in the opulent surroundings of a luxury train or corporate jet.

Whilst few, if any, hotels can afford to keep a full-time doctor employed on the payroll, many top establishments have access to an on-call doctor through a specialist agency such as DoctorCall. Founder Dr Charles Levinson pioneered the concept of a “private visiting doctor service” in London 35 years ago, with his first hotel house-call being to The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner (formerly St George’s Hospital), whose Front of House Manager was a personal friend. Since then, Dr Levinson and his team have been refining their bedside manner there, and in other plush West End hostelries such as The Dorchester, Four Seasons, The Peninsula and Raffles.

Dr Levinson’s first patient was staying at The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner

Their patients over the years have included everyone from Middle Eastern princes – one of whom, Dr Levinson tells me, “wore a blood-spattered thobe, which I removed to discover a stab wound from where his brother-in-law, a rival member of the royal family, had attempted to have him assassinated; he’d had to flee to London because the brother-in-law owned all the hospitals in his own country” – to rock and pop legends such as the late Michael Jackson and Prince. The latter, he reveals, “had nothing wrong with him, but insisted upon a doctor’s visit every day anyway as part of his rider”.

Guests tend to be referred to DoctorCall, in the first instance, by the hotel concierge (Dr Levinson is himself an honorary member of the concierges’ society Les Clefs d’Or). Most call-outs – which cost £180, about the same as a standard private GP appointment – are for routine complaints like upset stomachs.

Guests will often blame high end hotels for giving them food poisoning, in the hopes that they will get a refund on their meal claims Dr Levinson

“Some guests try to claim they’ve got food poisoning from the hotel kitchen,” Dr Levinson reveals, “hoping they’ll have some money discounted from their bill. But usually it’s because, whilst they might have checked into somewhere fancy in Mayfair, they’ve opted to ‘slum it’ – to save money, or just for fun – by having dinner somewhere less salubrious, and will pick up something nasty in one of the less fastidiously run places there.”

“All travel, even the most luxurious kind, can be stressful, though,” he adds. “People get exposed to new kinds of bugs that are completely foreign to their immune system. It’s even possible to get an iffy tummy from the difference in tap water between regions of England.”

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Sometimes, though, the leisure sickness is self-induced.

“I was called urgently to one high-end hotel where an elderly American gentleman guest had been ‘entertaining’ a much younger lady one night. She’d come running down the stairs, bolted through reception and yelled to the concierge on the way out to call an ambulance for him. The concierge, mindful of the gentleman’s wish for discretion, called me as well, and I arrived to find that he’d had a small heart attack from the exertion of all that entertaining.”

Over indulgence, whether sensual or substance-based, is a regular occurrence, Dr Levinson explains, although sometimes symptoms can be deceptive.

Dr Levinson has been called to various luxury hotels across London, including The Dorchester

“There was a case with another elderly chap who had retired in the Far East and was staying in a London hotel whilst visiting his family here. His daughter rang us and begged ‘Please come and see my father. He’s had a drink problem for years and I thought he was better, but now it seems he’s back on the bottle and in a terrible way.’ So I went along and sure enough he was in a pretty confused state, but he also had a very high fever. So I did some tests and it turned out that this poor, much-maligned man wasn’t actually drunk at all – he had cerebral malaria!”

Of course, grand hotels aren’t the only places where one might require medical assistance when travelling. Golden Eagle Luxury Trains own and operate sumptuous private carriages that transport well-heeled guests on some of the world’s most epic railway journeys.

These are bucket-list holidays, to be sure – packages range from £8,500 to £95,000 per trip – with the average age of passenger being just under 70. To look after them, the company always ensures one of their own doctors accompanies each train.

Luxury operator Golden Eagle ensures that there’s a doctor on each train in case a passenger has a health emergency

Doctor Hadley Skidmore trained as a GP and worked for several years in the NHS before joining Golden Eagle as Medical Advisor, overseeing the other doctors who work on their trains as well as travelling on many of them himself.

“I carry a medical kit everywhere, including a defibrillator, and see anyone who becomes unwell, usually in the privacy of their cabin,” he told me. “Some patients require simple reassurance, others need medication, and on some occasions urgent transfer to hospital is necessary. Over the years I have dealt with fast arrhythmias, falls with fractures, anaphylaxis, strokes, and complex stabilisation while making our way toward the nearest international-standard facility. 

“I have had instances where I have been with a patient for an entire 12-hour period in a foreign hospital before returning to the train in the early hours, where the train manager and carriage attendants welcomed back the patient with a glass of champagne!”

Dr Skidmore also works for a global medical assistance and repatriation company, caring for holidaymakers as well as corporate clients who have become ill overseas. He says the worst part is when a patient dies abroad.

NHS-trained Dr Hadley Skidmore now works full time as a medical advisor on the Golden Eagle

“There are well-established protocols and procedures for these situations, but the logistics can still be extremely complex. It generally depends on whether or not the death is expected…although generally it isn’t, of course, otherwise it’s unlikely they would have booked a holiday. The police need to be notified in case of foul play and, in cases of international repatriation, the body needs to be embalmed first and transported back in a hermetically sealed container (sometimes called a Ziegler Case) so that it doesn’t decompose on the plane.”

But even for patients with less serious complaints, the costs – which can sometimes involve chartering a private jet – can be astronomical: “the best part of £100,000 in many cases”, says Dr Skidmore.

“And air ambulances – which are effectively intensive-care units in the sky – are tiny. I once dealt with a gentleman who had to be repatriated on one, and his wife wanted to accompany him on the flight. It was so small, though, that the only place she could sit for the whole journey was in the toilet.”

All the more reason, Dr Skidmore advises, to ensure you always hold adequate travel insurance. It may not get you back your precious leave days, but it will at least spare you arriving home to a huge medical bill – the shock of which will leave you firmly in need of another holiday.

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