Service Excellence Training
For more than 20 years I have been active in the world of high-end hospitality. Involved in land-based projects and at sea on yachts between 50 and 181m. Working in the world of hospitality and providing excellent service made me quickly realize the importance of training and solid guidance for your team. Shortly after my Ivor Spencer Butler School training In London, I started a company to support high-end private functions with butler services. It gave me the opportunity to visit amazing places all over the world and the pleasure to meet wonderful people. Many projects required me to train the team and quickly this became my biggest passion. The years of working on mega yachts, luxury estates, resorts, hotels, and private events allowed me to even more perfect the Service Excellence training program and adapt it to every exciting project.
How would you describe the onboard Interior training style?
First of all, it is important to schedule enough time for the training! It is very useful to evaluate the team before creating a training program. After the evaluation, you can select the most important topics to start with. Take your time and do it in stages. This gives the team also the opportunity to use the learned skills and put them into practice. Therefore, all my formations are mostly hands-on! We debrief and evaluate at the end of the day and adjust the program if needed. The whole team must be up to speed and confident about all subjects. One to one training is very helpful for the team member that could use that extra push to get back on track.
Could you give us a few topics that are covered during the training?
To begin with, all the different styles of services like Silver, plated, butler, synchronized scissor, cloche, family-style, buffet, … This is a great way to get the team to work together and perform a great act. Like all acts, it will need regular rehearsal. Also, fish filleting at the buffet is a great thing to do and a good opportunity to present the day’s catch. The same for carving at the buffet. This definitely involves some skills and practice. Communication is a very important subject. Especially during service. It is very important to communicate well with the Galley brigade. Therefore, it is always advisable to include Chefs during service training to work on a communication plan that works for all departments. Guest language is a topic that could be woven
into the duration of the training. We are blessed in this industry to have the opportunity to work with a large variety of nationalities. Therefore, it is important to work on guest language to communicate correctly with the guests onboard and amongst the team. This is only a small list of possible topics to work on during the training days. Each project is different and might needs other topics to be covered.
What are some of the benefits of onboard Service training?
I often experienced some friction within a department due to an inexperienced or under-trained team. The more balanced the team members’ skills the better the overall performance of the whole team. This makes the general Interior operation more efficient, faster, smoother, and of a higher level. As a result, the crew is more smiley and proud to perform at their best. This brings up the whole aboard experience. It has been proven that after a few training sessions the crew intent to stay longer on the same yacht. The better the team is prepared for the upcoming season the bigger the chance to finish it successfully and all together as a team. ■ ■ ■