Ask Your Broker: Can You Hear Me Now?
href="http://www.charterwave.com/in-depth-interviews/charter-brokers.html" target="_blank">interviews with other reputable charter brokers
One of my job perks as a journalist covering the crewed yacht charter industry is that I regularly get to see boats, crew, and brokers in action. The destination features that I write as the publisher of CharterWave, the charter editor of Yachting magazine, and the Yacht Insider columnist for Boats.com are based on my personal experiences aboard yachts all over the world.
Yes, it's great work if you can get it. And yes, I enjoy the top-notch snorkeling and gourmet chefs as much as anybody else. But one of the less-discussed benefits of my journeys is my ability to see something that few, if any, yacht charter clients ever get to see: brokers in action.
It's an interesting thing, watching a charter broker at sea in a place like Alaska or Turkey or Brazil try to stay in touch with clients and on top of business matters. Yachts don't always offer cell service or online access, for instance. Brokers are often in places with significant time zone changes from wherever their clients are based. I've seen a fair share of charter brokers simply give up trying to communicate, and I've seen a fair share of brokers go to great lengths to stay connected.
The latter attitude always impresses me, of course, because I know that if I were spending $50,000, $150,000, or $500,000 on a week-long vacation, I'd want my broker to be accessible at all times. When I meet a broker who embodies this work ethic, I do my best to bring them to readers' attention.
This is the reason that I chose Natasha Smekalina of New York City-based Nemo Yachts as this month's featured broker on CharterWave. (That's her in the photograph above.) I met Smekalina during a charter in the out-islands of Fiji, where we were asked to share a cabin so that as many industry insiders as possible could get aboard the yacht. WiFi was sketchy at best, and cell service was intermittent from day to day. Several charter brokers on the trip threw their hands up in frustration, but I watched Smekalina keep her Blackberry in hand, or at her bedside, literally 24 hours a day. More than once, she was up in the middle of the night responding to e-mails from clients on the other side of the world. And she did so without complaint. "It's just my job to do it," she told me.
That attitude is something you will rarely find on a charter broker's resume, but that can make all the difference when it comes to your vacation being a success. I hope you'll take the time to read my newly posted interview with Smekalina, as well as my interviews with other reputable charter brokers who embody the same work ethic.
