Why today’s superyacht owners are saying no to silver service

The days of suffocating service, with crew constantly hovering over your shoulder, are dwindling, with more owners and guests craving independence, self-reliance and freedom from routine, as Kate Lardy discovers.

Jeannine Schröder has a new 44-metre yacht, but that doesn’t mean she’s kicking back and taking things easy. “Our preference is very clear,” she says, “we like to take care of things ourselves on board.” 

As she and her family set off on a world voyage in their Cantiere delle Marche Flexplorer Maverick, she says, “We plan to continue cooking for ourselves, going grocery shopping when needed and managing our own food and drinks. So far, this approach has worked perfectly for us. Being served, as might be customary on other yachts, is not our style at all. In our day-to-day life, we all have two healthy legs and can easily grab our own drinks and snacks. We actually enjoy this independence.”

In a superyachting culture of epaulettes and silver service, her outlook may seem out of place, yet more and more amenities catering to an independent, self-service lifestyle on board are popping up on new builds. Take, for example, the first wallywind110, Galma, which launched in June 2024. 

Instead of a lower-level lounge common on sailing yachts of this kind, you’ll find a help-yourself bar steps away from the owner’s cabin. Or consider a recently delivered yacht designed by Winch Design that has a coffee machine and egg maker in the owner’s suite. Is a trend emerging?

Yes it is, says designer Luiz De Basto, who has spent the last 30 years at the helm of his firm, De Basto Designs. “Everybody wants a little more independence, more privacy,” he says. “Buyers are getting younger; the new generation is a little bit different. They are not showing off to friends; they want experiences and are more self-sufficient.”

Experiences indeed – the couple with an egg maker in their suite are planning to spend the next two to three years travelling the world on board, says Jim Dixon, managing partner and creative director at Winch Design. “The yacht’s layout was uniquely tailored to their needs. The main saloon embraces a casual, relaxed atmosphere with a self-serve wine bar, while the bridge deck became their primary living space. They enjoy breakfast there daily and refer to the space as the Explorer Lounge, where they like to plan their next adventure.”

Along with the shift in owner demographics is a change of style on board. Gone are the gold-plated fixtures and with them, apparently, the white gloves. “Our definition of luxury is very different from what it’s been in the past,” says Mike Fisher, head of design firm Studio Indigo and a yacht owner himself. “Luxury is not about cut velvet and silks. Luxury today is more about natural fibres and natural textures, and food and service and the way that we live has changed in that sense as well.”

King Benji’s owner, Josh Golder, says luxury is all about having options. He designed his 47-metre yacht, launched by Dunya Yachts in 2024, to facilitate adventurous ones, and he, personally, doesn’t have time for formality. “I want to do stuff,” he says. “When you have a formal lunch and a formal dinner, you end up spending four to five hours of your day sitting and eating and being served, when you could be doing something outside. I don’t really like that. I prefer family-style (service) and shorter meals. I don’t think it compromises meal quality.”

He points out that “elaborate” doesn’t necessarily mean good, just as casual doesn’t mean bad. “I believe a lot of things in life are wrapped up in a fake formality to have a higher presentation value. I try to cut through all the noise, then it becomes, what is actually quality, what is good?” For example, he says, quality can be a burger – just one that’s made with Wagyu beef and a special cheese.

While his preferences were clear, Golder initially wasn’t sure what to expect from his charterers. “Our first-ever charter guest was a very well-known American hedge-fund guy. I had never chartered the boat before, so I was like, ‘Make sure everything is on point – have the caviar, the lobster, all the fancy stuff’. It turned out the highlight of his trip was swimming a mile in the Med every day with the tender next to him in case he got tired; it was diving with the crew and doing workouts with the crew and his family.”

King Benji mainly attracts families, which are typically the most relaxed of charterers, but with all the guests Golder has had, he says there has been no push towards formality and his crew have never asked for more training in silver service. Quite the opposite: “You would never think someone chartering these boats would get all gassed up over pizza nights, but they’ve been very popular,” he says.

“As I see it, people now want to have fun; they want to do stuff,” Golder continues. “It’s not stuffy like it used to be. In society now, you have younger people making more money than older people, through technology and social media. And younger people, for the most part, don’t like the formal things.”

Fisher agrees. “Youngsters today don’t live like their parents or grandparents. They want freedom. They don’t like to be waited on, so I think there is a desire to keep things more casual.”

Delivered in 2024, the 47-metre Sanlorenzo EXP500 M, an explorer-style yacht with a massive aft deck for carrying toys, is a prime example. Studio Indigo designed the interiors for a young couple in their 30s or 40s, “which is typical of who we are designing for these days”, Fisher says. The big aft deck is designed like a members’ club, featuring a semi-circular bar for guests to help themselves. They can do the same on the sundeck thanks to the designated area where food can be laid out.

“The boat is much more of a party space,” Fisher says. “Even down to the layout of the furniture, it was designed so that 20 or 30 people could hang out, dance, chat, serve their own drinks in a laid-back space, with nothing too precious in terms of fabrics and materials.”

Just as owners are prioritising experiences, charter guests aren’t simply floating from vista to vista; they are busier than ever with full itineraries of tastings, guided tours and tee times, says Jennifer Saia, charter specialist at Denison Yachting, who has been arranging charters since the early 1990s. “They’re looking to me and to the captain and chief stew to organise experiences and I’m doing so much more of that nowadays. It’s mind-boggling what’s happening throughout the day.”

Her active guests tend to prefer buffet-style service, particularly for breakfast and lunch, she says. But she points out another reason for this casual alternative: speciality diets can be an issue during plated service and, moreover, make the vegan, paleo or gluten-free guests feel singled out. In fact, she noticed when touring some boats recently, her clients never failed to point out how much they liked the round tables with integrated lazy Susans, which would allow them to pick and choose their food.

Service expectations can vary by personality of course, and generally as well by nationality. Saia’s clients are primarily from the Americas. They, along with European guests, tend to value the option for more independence and informality, says Dixon. “By contrast these types of requests are less common among Russian or Middle Eastern clients, who often prefer a more traditional, service-focused approach.” De Basto adds Asian clients to the latter group.

American James Berwind, owner of the 64-metre Royal Hakvoort Shipyard Scout, considers himself and his partner to be an extreme example of informality. The yacht is not only an extension of their home, it’s also the crew’s home, acknowledges Berwind, who prides himself on the fact that Scout’s crew areas are “maybe the nicest on any yacht”.  

There are no epaulettes to be found among the crew uniform and Berwind says he’s not comfortable with being called “Mr”. He didn’t design Scout with an interior dining saloon, and he and his partner don’t dress for dinner. Instead, “we live on the sundeck. Breakfast is a buffet, lunch is family style and we eat off the boat a fair amount. Most of the time we’ll invite whatever crew is available to join us,” he says.

“The way I was raised is there is no difference between the president and the guy who cleans his bathroom. As long as they both have integrity and they’re doing their job, they deserve equal respect.”

It’s no coincidence that all department heads have been on board since before Scout’s delivery in 2019. “With the tone that James sets, we’ve been able to build this incredible longevity among the crew,” says captain Kynan McDonald.

Like Berwind, Cheryl and Bill Drury like to hang out with their crew. When they were shopping for a monohull sailing yacht, one of their criteria was an integration of guest and crew areas, something they were used to and appreciated on their previous 19-metre catamaran with “galley up” design. 

“It felt like many boats had a huge dividing line between crew area and guest spaces with very different finishes,” Cheryl Drury says. “When we stepped on board (42-metre Jongert) Abide, the pocket door to the galley was open and you really didn’t notice that it’s the crew space. The mahogany/holly floor extended continuously into the galley and the finishes in the crew area were consistent with the rest of the boat.”

During the yacht’s recent 21-month refit, the owners opened up the galley and created a space in the crew mess where they could mix for a mid-morning chat. Outside, they added a “princess seat” opposite the nav station bench. “It’s such a good spot for chatting with the captain and crew while we are under way,” Drury says. “On our catamaran the four of us – the captain, chef, my husband and I – always hung out together on the flybridge and we wanted to recreate that feeling.”

Other owners value their privacy, which can also lead to more informal service. They tend to be more independent so they can see their crew less.

“One owner told me the last thing he wants is the crew stumbling over him when he’s relaxing,” says De Basto, who remembers a time when it was common for a crewmember to stand by, literally, in a corner. Those days are gone, he says, and lately he’s designing yachts that facilitate more independence for the owner’s party and more separation between them and crew.

Whether the shift towards more informal service stems from a pronounced separation from crew or extra familiarity with them, owners like Berwind are quick to point out that it doesn’t mean the crew aren’t doing their jobs. “We are not lax in terms of our expectations or the standard. We keep the boat in absolute tip-top shape,” he says.

His captain, McDonald, confirms that relaxed service and hard-working crew are not mutually exclusive ideals: “We still strive to keep the standard very high, but at the same time, we want to have their experience be a bit more laid back.”

First published in the July 2025 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.