Meeli Lepik, founder and chief consultant of Holistic Yacht Interiors, discusses why it is essential to factor the needs and welfare of crew into the yacht design process.
Each month, we share a discussion piece written by a guest author from the maritime sector who can offer a unique or interesting perspective on an aspect of seafarers’ welfare. You can join the conversation on our social media channels – LinkedIn and Facebook.
This month, we spoke to Meeli Lepik, founder and chief consultant of Holistic Yacht Interiors, about why it is essential to factor the needs and welfare of crew into the yacht design process.
Meeli Lepik is the founder of Holistic Yacht Interiors and brings over 20 years of hands-on experience in yachting and hospitality. Having worked closely with shipyards, designers, and as crew on some of the industry’s most complex new builds and operations, she understands what it takes to create interiors that not only look beautiful but also function in daily life. With a focus on practicality and people, Meeli helps turn design concepts into lived-in spaces that support guest experience, crew wellbeing, and the owner’s long-term investment in their yacht.
It would be only natural that the space you design is one you can relate to, wouldn’t it? This makes perfect sense for guest areas of a superyacht as every yacht designer, while not perhaps having lived on board, has likely stayed in a luxury hotel or resort. However, apart from the occasional lunch in the crew mess, many designers simply don’t know – and can’t know – what it truly feels like to live and work on board. But that’s exactly the kind of knowledge we need.
I’ve always said that crew longevity starts at the General Arrangement (GA) stage. Through proper planning, we can make more informed decisions – but to do so, we must understand how the yacht is experienced in its final form and it’s both the little and the big things that count.
I’ve learned that build-related features impacting crew welfare on board fall into three categories: catastrophic oversights, everyday functionality, and creature comfort.
I’ve never lived in a house, always been a city girl in an apartment. Yet last summer, my partner and I moved to our new home in the countryside. Though I had no prior experience with such a large space, I still had to make decisions about systems, features and materials. One year in, I can say this: thanks to a wide-opening terrace door, all our furniture fitted through without a problem. When I broke my leg and later nursed my sick mum, I was grateful someone had planned showers large enough for a wheelchair and chosen non-slip tiles. I can vacuum all 140 m² with only two plug-ins. The house makes sense.
That’s not a coincidence, it’s how I think. I approach every space with that certain practicality, something I’ve cultivated through new build projects where everything is about flow and function. Often, it’s not about deep technical knowledge, but about a way of thinking. That mindset is what prevents yachts being delivered with ten staircases and not a single electrical socket. It explains why a 100m+ vessel might have no crew elevator, or why all public lights are only controlled from the bridge. Why some hulls are un-washable. Why fire doors don’t stay open on magnets – creating safety issues and blocking service flow. Or why provisioning for 120 people still involves dragging 30kg boxes of frozen fish up a narrow gangway – because there is no crane. These are major oversights, often impossible or extremely expensive to fix later.
I once worked on a large conversion new-build. The commissioning stage – ideally a time of excitement – often led to a double gin & tonic on a Monday afternoon instead due the challenges we had. One day, a colleague and I were in IKEA to realise, to our horror, that much of their furniture was better quality than what we had on board.
From that visit a quote got stuck in my head: ‘Stop thinking superyachts, start thinking IKEA.’ It sounds provocative, but also very relevant. IKEA’s success is based on clever use of space and intuitive functionality. We should take note. Why not borrow few free ideas as a side to some Swedish meatballs next time we there?
Pantries and storage areas on yachts are so often duplicated from one project to the next, delivering only the minimum required functionality. It all kind of works but not because it’s good, rather because there’s no feedback loop. The Interior Onsite Contractor (IOC) companies and shipyards follow tradition, unaware of any alternatives. And they’ll even admit that.
This disconnect between operation and construction is real. Occasionally, you get an Owner’s Rep who is ‘in touch with their female side’ which might get you a few extra dishwashers in exterior bars, under the claim, ‘we thought of you, girls’. But girls don’t need dishwashers there – they need storage space.
A lot of it is common sense. Maybe we should not place a coffee machine next to the lounge sliding door if it’s going to grind beans loudly every morning. Let’s nano-coat the shower walls for easier care and apply protective film to that high-gloss credenza that will see heavy flower arrangements dragged across them. It is worth protecting stainless surfaces in the galley so chefs can spend less time cleaning, placing fridges where items won’t topple over constantly or subscribing to a mobile, intuitive inventory app. The list is long. What we like or think is not enough. There are those countertop racks where crew can place used dishes. Personally, I find them unhygienic and visually so unpleasant. But when I ran a poll in a Facebook interior crew group, 98% said they loved them for convenience. So, we must listen.
At a panel by The Superyacht Forum on crew retention, a captain said privacy curtains in bunk beds would solve his issue of crew turnover. I was honestly shocked. Surely, something like that should be bare minimum, a standard. These are the details that bring us to perhaps the most important category: creature comfort.
The MLC is taking steps to improve the crew areas on board: today nobody is allowed to live in a windowless cabin, and free internet is recognized as a human right. But there’s more. Regulations mandate outdoor recreation spaces, yet these often mean a seat in front of the bridge: exposed, with no shade or privacy, therefore rarely used. Sometimes it’s just a mooring flap in the tender garage, acting also as a smoking area. I’ve seen carpenters create removable tables over bollards, making space usable for crew gatherings. Safety must come first – but we can still think ahead.
While there are Passenger Yacht Code (PYC) and all other strict regulations to consider, crew mess and lounges can be warm, inviting spaces. A bit of artwork in corridors, rattan-style wall lamps for soft light, washable poufs for coziness, a few thoughtful accessories of color in tableware and some plants – all these add comfort. Inside cabins, we can do even more. On one yacht, large stuffed animals and personal photos weren’t allowed. But people need boards for memories, nice fabrics, maybe a roll cushion to elevate tired legs. The bathroom door should open in the right direction, so the light will not wake up the roommate on different shift. Night lights in wardrobes and day heads for those early mornings. Entertainment systems with personal headsets should be a must. The living quarters should not simply meet minimum requirements to tick boxes for the next MLC audit; they should be areas that the crew genuinely enjoys. It’s their home at sea.
The same applies to luxury areas. Guests relax, but for the crew, these are workspaces. If access is awkward or maintenance is difficult, motivation suffers. Double-glazed elevators that no one can clean. Steam room doors leaking onto carpets. Veneer floors that split. CISCO office phones glowing in guest cabins. Slippery staircases. Hammered metal sinks. Surfaces that fingerprint if you just look at them in a wrong way.
Dealing with all those extra things, which have nothing to do with guest service, is draining. I am not saying that yacht interiors should be reduced to functionality only – no, they must remain exclusive and bespoke – but they also need to be spaces that support the onboard experience, not obstruct it. For everyone.
So, it’s vital to talk to those who use the spaces, not assume, or even worse, hope to get away with it. I’ve met Owner’s Reps and IOCs who say they don’t want to see crew during the shipyard phase. They fear over-ordering or irrelevant feedback. And honestly, I get it. A Chief Steward(ess) lashing out over the little lobbies on the PYC boat during the onboard inspection is not helping anyone and will not add to her credibility or expertise. Ordering supplies for the first time is overwhelming. Inexperience leads to choices based on familiarity or fantasy – not the actual needs of that yacht. And this reinforces the view that crew are uninformed and a nuisance. And after all – ‘We’re building the yacht for the owner, not for crew’.
When the crew are consulted in the right way, and supported during the process, they don’t just make decisions based on personal taste. The goal is not to build for the crew – it’s to design with awareness of how the yacht will be lived in, run, and maintained. Ignoring that leads to impractical spaces, expensive retrofits, and irritated owners down the line.
But if you involve operational people too late (or not at all), how can they gain that knowledge? How can they make educated decisions and suggestions if no one is guiding them? So, that operational insight sits idle, anchored somewhere in the Bahamas, while we keep repeating the same mistakes.
Holistically speaking, it’s not just the spaces creating the ambiance – it’s the people. As diversity grows, design must respond. One tricky factor is crew accommodation dynamics. Considering ranks, duties, shifts, gender and nationalities in crew complement makes the cabin allocation a proper Sudoku. Cabins near the crew mess are bigger but they’re also the noisiest, still assigned to senior position due to the count of m2 as per MLC. Having two nurses or chefs or laundry masters sharing makes them talk shop all the time and not switch off to rest. Some nationalities are quiet, others more social. We need to drop the attitude that this aspect of the setup will somehow sort itself out later. It probably will, but not in a good way.
The reason for poor performance is often not the lack of skill or will, it’s the lack of connection between people, within the group and the more I think about it – the space. Such disconnection eventually means high crew turnover, involving costs, inconsistency, and loss of privacy for the Owner.
‘Yachting offers an exceptional experience to the Owner and guests’ – that’s our industry’s promise. And it’s our job to support that, fully. Everyone’s talking about the so-called trillion-dollar wealth transfer meaning that younger ultra-high-net-worth individual clients will soon dominate. Lot of science has been applied to learn of how to attract them. But while wealth shapes lifestyle, the generational mindset, a zeitgeist applies equally to people below the deck.
Today’s workforce isn’t so easily convinced by our industry’s glamour. Other values may dominate over luxury. The typical slogans: ‘suck it up, it’s yachting’, ‘you knew what you signed up for’, ‘it is what it is’ or ‘back in my days’ are not that easy to silence with exotic destinations and hefty charter tips.
The new generation of Owners are all about experience. And so are their crew. Experience at sea. In their job. In their life. If we don’t start approaching yachts holistically, with all aspects in mind throughout its lifecycle and our best offer to attract new generations is ‘take it or leave it’, they just might leave.
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