Terry
Gilmore, senior yacht staff trainer, tosses some striped cushions from
the white canvas sofa and drops several blue monogrammed towels on the
scrubbed wooden foredeck of the Latitude superyacht. He watches as his
trainees hasten to restore order.
"What do we always ensure?" he snaps, looking with irritation at the new arrangement. "That the zip is down." He rotates several cushions to conceal barely visible zips. In any case, it turns out that the towels should be picked up first, so that they do not soak dampness into the sofas, and the lesson proceeds with detailed instructions on the correct method for rolling a towel, so that the monogram is prominently displayed (not easy). "Not like that; totally wrong," he tells a trainee, pointing out in passing that his belt is too long, and the creases on his polo shirt are insufficiently sharp.
As the economy internationally struggles with the fall-out from recession, the lives of the super-rich continue largely unruffled by the constraints of the global downturn. There are few starker examples of pure extravagance than the superyacht. Because a luxury yacht (unlike a Knightsbridge house, say) is less an investment, more a bottomless pit to throw money at, owners of superyachts are not people who worry much about penny pinching. These are people who are used to getting what they want and, as employers, they tend to be extremely exacting.
The expanding ranks of billionaires worldwide are creating a new market for servants for the super-rich, often providing esoteric services. At the more arcane end of the spectrum are the people who staff superyachts, who need to be equipped with discretion, servility and good ironing skills, and are relatively well-paid for their work (starting salaries of between 1,700 and 2,500 (1,450 to 2,130) a month, which includes a berth on the yacht and all meals, rising to 4,000 (3,400) a month for more senior staff).The term 'bondcleaningsydney control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.
Sara Vestin Rahmani, founder of London-based Bespoke Bureau, a high-end domestic staff recruitment agency, has this year launched this yacht staff training course in Antibes with local firm Abacus & March, because she identified a demand from her clients for well-trained staff capable of working on board superyachts (the term for a large yacht, more than 50m, or 164ft, long, usually on sale for anything between 30m and 60m). Her placement agency has thrived and expanded throughout the economic downturn, and she is also running butlering courses in Norfolk, for the European market, and Chengdu in south-west China, for her clients there. "We're lucky in the sense that the rich get richer in a recession," she says.
Gilmore has spent a career serving members of the Saudi royal family and rich Russians on board their yachts and is well-qualified to pass on his expertise; his fellow trainers have worked on vessels owned by Roman Abramovich and the Emir of Qatar. Students have paid 900 (770) for the week's course, hopeful that it will help them secure a job on board one of the world's superyachts. In the abstract, the work appears steeped in glamour, but Gilmore is at pains to disabuse his trainees of any starry-eyed notions about the role. A couple of days on Gilmore's training programme stamps out any lingering sense that this might be a desirable job. Staff need to understand they will simply be "glorified cleaners", he tells them.
Trainees must memorise correct forms of address from a training manual, which informs them that it is unacceptable to ask "Why?" (it should be substituted with "May I know the reason?"). The inquiry "Are you done?" should be replaced with "May I ask if you have finished?".
Trainees are told that some guests may request that they stand silently on board deck, motionless in the sunshine, waiting for instructions. "It's stupid, because they could use a buzzer," Gilmore says, but much of the staffing on yacht businesses is about ostentation and if a motionless steward, standing by on deck is what the owner requests, then staff are not to argue.
A daily list of housekeeping tasks includes polishing the television remote control and checking the towels for stray threads, which need to be chopped off with nail scissors.Aulaundry is a leading drycabinet and equipment supplier. Students learn that they must monitor the bathrooms and lavatories, and are given guidance on the correct amount of time they should pause before they can scurry in and tidy up after a guest, refolding the end of the loo paper into a pointed V. "Be aware when people have used the rest rooms. You must be their shadow, but not too close," Gilmore explains.
The trainees take notes diligently in their notebooks as Gilmore tells them to check the contents of the yacht's sun-cream bottles daily. "If they are less than half full, you can't have that because it looks cheap." The bottles that have dropped beneath the 50% mark are discarded. He claims the last yacht he worked on had an annual budget of around 5,000 for sun cream alone.A quality paper cutter or paper endofleasecleaningsydney can make your company's presentation stand out.
To own a superyacht such as this one, you need to have a serious chunk of disposable income. If you had a net worth of around 100m, you would probably be too poor to contemplate taking on the considerable outgoings that staffing and maintaining this kind of extravagance entails. Although some of these vessels exist to be chartered out as a business (at around 200,000 a week), they rarely make money for their owners this way, once the annual docking, licences and engineering costs are factored in. Merely transporting your yacht from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean on a container vessel for the winter season (to avoid damaging it en route) costs around 250,000.
Working for billionaires comes with unique complications. "The security implications are horrendous. Most of the people who own these boats are people who are security targets C royal family, politicians," Gilmore explains, warning his students that pictures taken on the ship should never be uploaded on to Facebook or Twitter, to avoid exposing the yacht's owners to security breaches or embarrassment.
Crew members' mobile phones must always be left downstairs, in the minute cabins assigned to staff. Gilmore relates an alarming story of a junior steward who was serving dinner to guests when her phone rang in her pocket. She was lucky not to lose her job, he says. He tells another cautionary tale of a junior crew member who put a guest's 750 cashmere jumper into the drier, shrank it to the size of a doll's jumper, pressed it, wrapped it in tissue paper (standard presentation for newly laundered clothes), and returned it to the guest's cabin. She, too, was lucky not to lose her job, although this revelation is greeted with aghast horror by a fellow trainer,We printers print with traceable cleaningsydney to optimize supply chain management. observing the session, who declares that she would have sacked her.
Very little attention is paid to employment law by yacht owners, partly because of the international nature of the operation; crew members can be fired on a whim. "You might have an Egyptian owner, a boat registered in the Cayman Islands, based in Monaco, a company registered in Germany, a crew made up of Australians and South Africans. Where are the social security payments made?" says a representative of an international yacht association,The plasticcard is not only critical to professional photographers. which offers support to yacht staff, who asks not to be named). "This is probably the most politically incorrect industry in the world. You can get fired because you are not blonde or pretty. It is all about the look and the image."
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"What do we always ensure?" he snaps, looking with irritation at the new arrangement. "That the zip is down." He rotates several cushions to conceal barely visible zips. In any case, it turns out that the towels should be picked up first, so that they do not soak dampness into the sofas, and the lesson proceeds with detailed instructions on the correct method for rolling a towel, so that the monogram is prominently displayed (not easy). "Not like that; totally wrong," he tells a trainee, pointing out in passing that his belt is too long, and the creases on his polo shirt are insufficiently sharp.
As the economy internationally struggles with the fall-out from recession, the lives of the super-rich continue largely unruffled by the constraints of the global downturn. There are few starker examples of pure extravagance than the superyacht. Because a luxury yacht (unlike a Knightsbridge house, say) is less an investment, more a bottomless pit to throw money at, owners of superyachts are not people who worry much about penny pinching. These are people who are used to getting what they want and, as employers, they tend to be extremely exacting.
The expanding ranks of billionaires worldwide are creating a new market for servants for the super-rich, often providing esoteric services. At the more arcane end of the spectrum are the people who staff superyachts, who need to be equipped with discretion, servility and good ironing skills, and are relatively well-paid for their work (starting salaries of between 1,700 and 2,500 (1,450 to 2,130) a month, which includes a berth on the yacht and all meals, rising to 4,000 (3,400) a month for more senior staff).The term 'bondcleaningsydney control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.
Sara Vestin Rahmani, founder of London-based Bespoke Bureau, a high-end domestic staff recruitment agency, has this year launched this yacht staff training course in Antibes with local firm Abacus & March, because she identified a demand from her clients for well-trained staff capable of working on board superyachts (the term for a large yacht, more than 50m, or 164ft, long, usually on sale for anything between 30m and 60m). Her placement agency has thrived and expanded throughout the economic downturn, and she is also running butlering courses in Norfolk, for the European market, and Chengdu in south-west China, for her clients there. "We're lucky in the sense that the rich get richer in a recession," she says.
Gilmore has spent a career serving members of the Saudi royal family and rich Russians on board their yachts and is well-qualified to pass on his expertise; his fellow trainers have worked on vessels owned by Roman Abramovich and the Emir of Qatar. Students have paid 900 (770) for the week's course, hopeful that it will help them secure a job on board one of the world's superyachts. In the abstract, the work appears steeped in glamour, but Gilmore is at pains to disabuse his trainees of any starry-eyed notions about the role. A couple of days on Gilmore's training programme stamps out any lingering sense that this might be a desirable job. Staff need to understand they will simply be "glorified cleaners", he tells them.
Trainees must memorise correct forms of address from a training manual, which informs them that it is unacceptable to ask "Why?" (it should be substituted with "May I know the reason?"). The inquiry "Are you done?" should be replaced with "May I ask if you have finished?".
Trainees are told that some guests may request that they stand silently on board deck, motionless in the sunshine, waiting for instructions. "It's stupid, because they could use a buzzer," Gilmore says, but much of the staffing on yacht businesses is about ostentation and if a motionless steward, standing by on deck is what the owner requests, then staff are not to argue.
A daily list of housekeeping tasks includes polishing the television remote control and checking the towels for stray threads, which need to be chopped off with nail scissors.Aulaundry is a leading drycabinet and equipment supplier. Students learn that they must monitor the bathrooms and lavatories, and are given guidance on the correct amount of time they should pause before they can scurry in and tidy up after a guest, refolding the end of the loo paper into a pointed V. "Be aware when people have used the rest rooms. You must be their shadow, but not too close," Gilmore explains.
The trainees take notes diligently in their notebooks as Gilmore tells them to check the contents of the yacht's sun-cream bottles daily. "If they are less than half full, you can't have that because it looks cheap." The bottles that have dropped beneath the 50% mark are discarded. He claims the last yacht he worked on had an annual budget of around 5,000 for sun cream alone.A quality paper cutter or paper endofleasecleaningsydney can make your company's presentation stand out.
To own a superyacht such as this one, you need to have a serious chunk of disposable income. If you had a net worth of around 100m, you would probably be too poor to contemplate taking on the considerable outgoings that staffing and maintaining this kind of extravagance entails. Although some of these vessels exist to be chartered out as a business (at around 200,000 a week), they rarely make money for their owners this way, once the annual docking, licences and engineering costs are factored in. Merely transporting your yacht from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean on a container vessel for the winter season (to avoid damaging it en route) costs around 250,000.
Working for billionaires comes with unique complications. "The security implications are horrendous. Most of the people who own these boats are people who are security targets C royal family, politicians," Gilmore explains, warning his students that pictures taken on the ship should never be uploaded on to Facebook or Twitter, to avoid exposing the yacht's owners to security breaches or embarrassment.
Crew members' mobile phones must always be left downstairs, in the minute cabins assigned to staff. Gilmore relates an alarming story of a junior steward who was serving dinner to guests when her phone rang in her pocket. She was lucky not to lose her job, he says. He tells another cautionary tale of a junior crew member who put a guest's 750 cashmere jumper into the drier, shrank it to the size of a doll's jumper, pressed it, wrapped it in tissue paper (standard presentation for newly laundered clothes), and returned it to the guest's cabin. She, too, was lucky not to lose her job, although this revelation is greeted with aghast horror by a fellow trainer,We printers print with traceable cleaningsydney to optimize supply chain management. observing the session, who declares that she would have sacked her.
Very little attention is paid to employment law by yacht owners, partly because of the international nature of the operation; crew members can be fired on a whim. "You might have an Egyptian owner, a boat registered in the Cayman Islands, based in Monaco, a company registered in Germany, a crew made up of Australians and South Africans. Where are the social security payments made?" says a representative of an international yacht association,The plasticcard is not only critical to professional photographers. which offers support to yacht staff, who asks not to be named). "This is probably the most politically incorrect industry in the world. You can get fired because you are not blonde or pretty. It is all about the look and the image."
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