A good travel journalist shouldn’t be susceptible to bribery, but by the time I’d been met at the airport by my butler, served a glass of champagne, been ushered past all the stressed-out, stick-thin Fashion Week models to my waiting Bentley Flying Spur, I was pretty much ready to write a rave review. That we drove a special route banned to normal traffic, that my favourite composer was playing as I entered my room and that my arrival was followed 12 seconds later by a tray of iced Calvisius caviar with blinis, sour cream, lemons and toast, only confirmed my resignation to a new corrupt existence.

Turns out it’s okay, though — I’m not receiving special treatment. All this will be perfectly normal for every guest arriving at the Town House Galleria, Milan’s newest luxury hotel. Why? Because, certification pending, this will be Europe’s first seven-star hotel. Caviar and Bentleys are de rigueur.

I had been ready to criticise, really I had. When a hotel that hasn’t even opened claims it will be “Europe’s first seven-star hotel”, you immediately think something’s a bit fishy. For a start, there’s no such thing as a seven-star category. The Burj Al Arab in Dubai and the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi might claim to be seven-star, but that’s their own interpretation, measured presumably by how much gold and marble you can squeeze into one building. On the Arabian scale of conspicuous overconsumption, the Galleria doesn’t come close. It doesn’t have a submarine to take you to dinner or a fleet of 25 white Rolls-Royces or the world’s largest cupola in its lobby or Andre Agassi playing tennis on the roof. It doesn’t have a swimming pool (even five-stars have those). Hardly seven-star material.

Then, when you look at the whole “certification pending” thing, it gets even fishier, because they instigated the whole process. They phoned up a big Swiss certification company and said: “Can you set up a seven-star rating and then test us to see if we pass?” Fishy, don’t you think?

I’ve stayed at some of the best hotels on the planet and they’re happy enough slumming it down in the five-stars. So what do you get for the alleged extra two? As the first journalist to test the Galleria, my initial thought, three weeks before I’d even checked in, was... two whole stars of extra hassle. You see, I was e-mailed a two-page questionnaire. AKA two pages of hassle. It wanted to know what room temperature would I prefer? What language would I like to communicate in? Would I like cotton or linen sheets? Choose a type of pillow. Name your favourite music. What’s the capital of Djibouti? When I failed to fill it out, I was e-mailed, then called to ask if I’d got it. Then, a week later, I was called to ask if I wanted a massage. Or tickets to una prima at La Scala? And, if so, a dinner jacket?

I found all this quite annoying. It reminded me of the only time I ever got double-upgraded to first class. The seats were the same as business. The food was the same. The only difference was that I got my very own steward, who talked to me, showed me his jewellery and sprayed perfume in my eyes all the way to Kuala Lumpur. The Galleria philosophy felt the same.

But then there was the Bentley and the caviar, and Vito, my butler, discreetly asking when I’d like dinner and whisking my shirt off to iron so beautifully and so instantaneously that I wished I were married to him and not my wife, who never gets the collars right. He wasn’t hassling. He wasn’t annoying. He was just preemptively, almost unnervingly helpful.

As for the suite (almost all of the 22 rooms are suites), it was not palatial: the bathroom was pretty standard marble-posh; the furnishings plush but not Michael Jackson-OTT. But then you draw open the five-metre-high silk curtains, and there you are, two floors up in the glass-ceilinged extravagance of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, surely the most stunning shopping mall on the planet. How they got permission to open a hotel here, in the middle of a national monument, I have no idea.

Still, that probably only accounts for one bonus star. Any hotel can do a fancy pillow menu and many have colonised historic buildings, but that’s not good enough for me. I’m a Russian oligarch. An ex-president. An Alist Hollywooder with a penchant for violence if my favourite flavour Jelly Belly isn’t waiting for me on check in. I want more than goddamn pillow choice, and I want it now.

So I handed Vito my watch, which had stopped, and asked him to make it work again. Half an hour later, it did. So I demanded to see The Last Supper, knowing full well that since the Da Vinci Bloody Code, the waiting list for a 15-minute, 25-person group slot is about two months. Before I could say, “It’s not what you know”, I was having a private tour with an expert guide. Oi, Vito, I want to eat at Zero, the hottest Japanese in town, with only 17 sought-after seats around the wizard sushi chef. Your seat is reserved, Mr Rudd. It’s Fashion Week in Milan so I fancy catching a show, pronto. No problem, here’s a ticket for Prada, sir.

I am genuinely overwhelmed at my butler’s connections but I still have my piãce de résistance — the gin. My father-in-law knows how to make his son-in-law’s life difficult. He only drinks export-strength Plymouth gin. Point blank refuses to try anything else. You can’t get export-strength in England and it’s almost impossible to find on the rest of the planet, either. He knows that, which is why, every time I go away, he asks for a bottle. And always looks mortally offended when I fail to find one. Offended not just about the lack of gin, but also because he senses that his daughter could have done so much better.

“Vito, I need a bottle of export-strength Plymouth gin. Nothing else, not even Bombay Sapphire, will do.” Three hours later, Vito has established that Italy’s only Plymouth gin supplier does not have the strong stuff. Haha, I think. I’ve got you. My father-in-law will still be disappointed. Hahahaha — except Vito, damn him, has found an internet supplier who will have a bottle at my home address before the week is out. The service really is seven-star.

Sadly, so is the price. You won’t get a room for less than €800 a night and most are significantly more. If you want the extensive Verdi suite, that’s €10,000. You’d think they’d chuck in a free minibar but they don’t. They charge an outrageous €8 for a 200ml Coca-Cola. The €80 pot of caviar is included but the €250atrip Bentley isn’t. And you won’t find the dining room a snip either. Mind you, they’ll prepare anything you ask for (you have to give them a bit of notice if it’s kangaroo with crocodile tongues on a bed of Malawian grasshopper wings).

This is, in short, a hotel for people who don’t need to worry about the mortgage. Or if they do, it’s on the yacht in St Tropez, not the one-bed in Finsbury Park. On the subject of the fishy certification, Alessandro Rosso, the gregarious owner, says he isn’t claiming his latest hotel is the best in the world. He thinks there are plenty of others that deserve more than a five-star rating, it’s just that the system is wrong. Others will follow suit.

I’m not so sure, but the Galleria does deserve its seven spurious stars. I stayed one night and already found it hard to exist without Vito. The sheer pleasure of having everything organised, from flight check-ins and private piano recitals to VIP tables and a nice cup of tea first thing, makes me wish I’d gone into money-laundering, not travel journalism. Give it a week and I wouldn’t be able to wipe my bottom without ringing for help. You have been warned.

The Town House Galleria (00 39 02 8905 8297, www.townhouse.it).

Matt Rudd travelled to Milan as a guest of British Airways (www.ba.com)

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