The Good, the Bad, and the Outstanding.

This week I’ve been taking a look at our Feedback Book. That’s the book where we keep the feedback forms each student completes at the end of their course. These are examined by the RYA as part of our annual inspection.

Feedback is invaluable to us as it tells us both what we’re doing right and what we need to do better. We’re highly customer-focused and every year we try to improve our students’ experience.

Reading the 2013 feedback forms I was delighted to see that the word written most often about our courses is ‘Excellent’. That’s really good news. We aim to give you an excellent and outstanding experience and, judging by the feedback, we achieve it most of the time.

Regrettably, our Feedback Book doesn’t contain only praise, although negative remarks are in a minority. This is where we learn of anything that has gone wrong and what students didn’t like.

Even with the best will in the world I doubt if you could satisfy everyone but I’m glad to say that it’s very rare for us to have an unhappy customer. We did have one this year but I believe that the lady concerned is now satisfied with our response and we hope to see her again next year.

The only other problems I read about were with equipment on a couple of the yachts we chartered in when our main teaching boats were full. To meet additional demand for courses, we chartered in other boats from Athens but sometimes these weren’t up to the same standards as our own.

We’ve learned from this and are currently looking for another yacht to use for next year that will be as good as the ones we have. I’ll keep you posted on what we find.

And if you’d like to own a boat and keep it in Greece under our management please talk to us …

So that’s the good and the bad. What about the outstanding?

Well, the most lavish praise in the book is directed at our instructors. We’ve got a great bunch of people working for us. They are pleasant, experienced, good teachers, and we’ve been lucky enough to keep them for several years (we make sure we treat them right). This means that they build up a fantastic knowledge of the area.

Being taught by someone who really knows the area well benefits you as a student in many ways. You’ll get more sailing as your instructor will have observed the wind patterns and will know exactly which way to head to get the best breeze. He or she will use their experience to judge the best place for carrying out manoeuvres so that you don’t miss out on any part of the syllabus due to conditions not being appropriate.

And of course, when it comes to eating ashore they’ll be able to take you to tavernas that offer tasty food and good service at a fair price. You won’t get ripped off or served tourist rubbish.

Our instructors are truly outstanding and play a huge role in making Aegean Sailing School what it is – the best place to learn to sail, not just in Greece, but in the whole Mediterranean!

If you intend to bareboat charter next year we can supply one of our great instructors to help you, either just for the first day or two or for your whole trip.

And if you plan to take an RYA course with us I recommend that you book as soon as possible to guarantee a place on one of our main teaching yachts for your course. As an incentive, if you book and pay your deposit before the end of this month you’ll get 2013 prices. (If you’re a Crew Club member, we’ll give you a 5% discount as well!)

Get in touch now to arrange your 2014 sailing. Click here to email Melody.