Top Tips For Working as a Stewardess

Stewardesses share their greatest tips for keeping the interior in check and the guests happier than ever...

“Knowing your guests, sometimes knowing them better than they know themselves. Not necessarily knowing their expectations, but exceeding their expectations…Knowing how they want their coffee, knowing how they want their meals, knowing the smaller details of their life makes a huge difference.”

Chief Stewardess Mica, M/Y Siete

“Layering. I find that the more layers that you use…the more depth it gives, the more height it gives, and the more ‘wow’ effect it has when your guests come to the table.”

Chief Stewardess Julie, M/Y Silver Lining

“Keep calm and breathe. Namaste.”

Stewardess Leilani, M/Y Serenity

“It’s a new app called VinoCell. On board Ocean Club, we carry over three hundred bottles of wine at any given time…The app is really helpful because you can take a picture of the wine bottle and it will inventory it for you, tell you how much it’s worth, …when it needs to be turned, when it needs to stand up, all these different things, and when it needs to be drunk by so you don’t serve your guests bad wine.”

Chief Stewardess CC, M/Y Ocean Club

“Wing it. The story behind this is we were left with the bare minimum on the boat in regards to decorations so we basically took all the ornaments and used the Greek goddess theme with three ladies we had on board in keeping with some of the ornaments on board.”

Chief Stewardess Helen, M/Y Ionian Princess

“Be like the duck so on the surface, you want everything to look smooth, calm, and perfectly seamless, and underneath the water, you’re paddling like crazy to get that done.”

Stewardess Erin, M/Y Qing

“Letting go of your pride. Just let it go. You can learn from anybody and everybody, whether it’s interior, exterior, second stew, chief stew, whether you’re new, old. So keep your mind open, take that criticism and those suggestions.”

Chief Stewardess Jessica, M/Y Tó-Kalón

“Mizu means water in Japanese… I’m from Tennessee so I’m the perfect example — you don’t have to have water to get into the yachting industry. Just take that chance and you’ll never know where the adventure will lead you.”

Chief Stewardess Paige, M/Y Mizu

“Set your table with silver polishing gloves so you kill two birds with one stone.”

Second Stewardess Julia, M/Y Chasseur

“Always look behind you… For instance, if you’re in housekeeping and you’ve just made a bed or you’ve just cleaned a cabin, don’t just walk out. Look behind you because you never know what you might need to fix…Even if you’re in service, setting a table, you might be so into setting this table that you just miss something… It makes all the difference.”

Second Stewardess Elle, M/Y Lazy Z

“Something a good friend of mine said to me the other day…‘It breaks my heart that pirates spend their whole lives following a map when the real treasure is the friendships they build along the way.’ And in yachting we meet lots of people…so keep your friendships well.”

Chief Stewardess Dawn, M/Y Lumiere

“Love the life you live, and live the life you love.”

Second Stewardess Jenny, M/Y Angiamo

“When you have nibbly little corners that you can’t hoover into, you simply get a piece of paper and you roll it up in a cone shape so one end of the paper forms a smaller point. Then use some handy blue tape. Then you take the end of the hoover and… ta-da you can get into the tight corners you couldn’t before.”

Third Stewardess Courtney, M/Y MiM

“Make things handmade. We all know how busy it can get on trip, we all know that we all have that creative spark in us. We need to feed that sometimes… As interior, we always make time to go to the beach and if you walk around, see something like a piece of driftwood, or garbage that looks a little bit artistic, pick it up, do something with it. Be creative…. This one time we were on the beach and we found this piece of driftwood. We thought ‘aw great,’ it’s a really nice, perfect piece of driftwood…We brought it back to the boat and we got a magnifying glass, used the sun to laser out the boat’s logo onto the driftwood. The captain helped us with that. We cut out three holes in the driftwood and we put candles so now it’s a labeled piece of driftwood that’s a candle holder.”

Chief Steward Nico and Second Stewardess Chenelle, M/Y MAG III

“Excellent service doesn’t cost you anything, but poor service could cost you everything.”

Chief Stewardess Judy, M/Y Amitié