Meet Eurodam’s Culinary Operations Manager

Mark Zeller, Culinary Operations Manager

As Eurodam’s culinary operations manager, Mark Zeller is responsible for managing and executing the food preparation, presentation and delivery in all of the ship’s dining venues. Formerly called the food and beverage manager, Holland America Line split the position into two jobs — culinary operations manager and beverage manager — to allow a greater focus on each area.

For Zeller, going to sea was in his blood. The son of a well-known hotel manager who served with Holland America Line for more than 43 years, he was exposed to ship life when he was just 3 years old.

The Dutchman, who was born in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, chose to follow in his father’s footsteps and enrolled in hotel management school in Leeuwarden. After three years of schooling, he served a year-long internship at The Marquette Hotel in Minneapolis, Minn., where he realized that he preferred a job at sea.

Knowing that Holland America Line was the only line for him, Zeller accepted a position as an assistant dinning room manager in 1996. Over the next eight years, he worked his way through various positions within the Hotel Department, eventually becoming culinary operations manager in 2004. Just 28 at the time of his appointment, he was Holland America Line’s youngest culinary operations manager.

Zeller has been involved in the newbuild setup and introductions of all four vista-class ships, and he currently is culinary operations manager on board ms Amsterdam.

When not at sea, Zeller enjoys spending time outdoors and can be found backpacking, scuba diving and sky diving around the world.

Stateroom Installation Begins

Fincantieri has begun installing the prefabricated staterooms on Eurodam this week. ENB asked Blog Board member Pieter Rijkaart about the installation, and he informed us that 65 percent of the ship’s staterooms are prefabricated shoreside, with the fixed furniture already in place before the unit is moved into its assigned slot on board.

A stateroom being outfitted with the fixed furniture during the prefabrication process

A Deck 6 midship stateroom waiting for installation

A stateroom being hoisted on board Eurodam

Eurodam at the Outfitting Dock

Henry Veringa, Holland America Line’s project manager at the yard, just sent us these images of Eurodam in its new home at the outfitting dock. Because the ship is not fully outfitted and provisioned, it’s riding high in the water. As construction progresses and the ship gains weight, the bulbous bow will become submerged.

Eurodam to Feature ‘Wet Cleaning’ System for Garments

‘Wet cleaning’ is an environmentally responsible alternative to traditional dry cleaning

With environmental concerns taking center stage in recent years and the move toward being more green on the rise, Holland America Line is taking a look at various operations on board that offer more environmentally friendly solutions.

One such area is that of garment dry cleaning, which involves a variety of solvents and chemicals that require strict handling and disposal guidelines governed by international laws. The solution? Change the cleaning system.

Eurodam will be outfitted with an environmentally friendly system called wet cleaning from Canadian supplier Solvent Free Solutions, using detergents manufactured by Winning Brands Corp. The alternative to traditional on-board dry cleaning is already being used on eight other Holland America Line vessels.

The Solvent Free Solutions team designs and installs systems that permit garments labeled “dry clean only‚” to be cleaned instead using Smart Wet Cleaning Liquids, plain water and special Wet Cleaning machines. The systems provide a safer, environmentally responsible alternative to old-fashioned perchlorethylene-based dry cleaning systems.

Premium Crew: Training For Excellence Part II

Lance Camarena, Holland America’s director of corporate training and development

Lance Camarena, director of corporate training and development for Holland America Line, has an important task ahead: ensuring that the Eurodam crew is ready for the first guests who sail in July 2008. ENB sat down with Camarena last week, and today we reveal the details of how he accomplishes this daunting task when he arrives at Eurodam just three weeks before the launch to train the new ensemble of crew members.

Through years of experience and numerous ship launches, Camarena says he found that the most effective time for training was before the ship set sail, as it gives the crew time for lectures and training activities without the added pressure of having guests on board.

“Veendam was the first newbuild where we got on board to train as part of the pre-build process, but the training experience really came to maturity with the Vista-class ships,” said Camarena. “On a newbuild, 80 percent of the crew and 95 percent of the officers are seasoned, hand-chosen, experienced people. We’re not doing the ABC kind of training with them.”

Once on board, Camarena and his team take the stateroom closest to the hotel manager’s office, empty it out and make it their on-board headquarters. “We use the opportunity of being on the ship to create new training materials and adapt materials to new situations,” said Camarena. “We’ll also trial new training initiatives.”

Camarena compares getting a new ship and its crew ready to moving into a new house or office: you still have day-to-day chores like cooking and cleaning to complete in addition to making the new place ready to move into. His challenge is to weave in training while preparing the ship.

To help him in the training process, over the years he has partnered with a seasoned hotel manager, Rene Tuinman, a veteran of numerous newbuilds. Tuinman serves as liaison between the ship and the corporate office.

“By partnering with Rene, I found I could be doubly effective,” said Camarena. “His inside perspective gives us the flexibility to work around the crew’s schedule to set up a better-organized program for training. It enables us to take training from the five-star to the 6.5-star level.”

While the training primarily is focused on the hotel side of the operation, the training department still looks across the fleet for common areas of concern. And all crew are reminded of the premium attributes that contribute to the overall Holland America Line experience. The training period on board also serves as a good time for crew to brush up on their language skills and learn about different cultures. Because HAL caters to an international clientele, crew must learn to adapt their levels of personal service and understand the preferences that different cultures enjoy.

To give the crew realistic training experiences, Camarena likes to run different areas of the ship as if guests were on board. He shuts down the crew mess areas for dinner and opens the dining room and the Lido several times for the restaurant teams to practice.

“Dining room staff serve their fellow crewmembers as if they were passengers, and the crew even dine off of the real HAL menu, giving the galley staff a chance to prepare the cuisine that guests will enjoy,” he said. “For many crewmembers, it’s the first and only time they will get to dine in the dining room. Likewise, for entertainment, the production cast runs dress rehearsals of the shows for the crew exactly as they will be for guests.”

Camarena likes to keep shipboard training fun

And Camarena always leaves time for fun and games. He likes to pump up the crew with various competitions. One of the favorites is the dining room competition where he challenges the staff to set up a series of dining room tables while working against the clock. The team with the lowest time and a perfect setup — measured to the millimeter — wins.

In addition to making the crew ready before the first guests embark, Camarena’s overall goal is to give the management teams on board the proper tools to continue training the crew after he’s moved on.

“We do a lot of training the trainers,” he said. “We work with the management teams so they can work with their crew teams to make sure we maintain our high standards.”

Premium Crew: Training for Excellence

The ms Nieuw Jakarta school in Indonesia

ENB recently sat down with Lance Camarena, director of corporate training and development, to learn how Holland America Line gets new employees ready to hit the high seas and provide the HAL premium experience.

Holland America Line operates two service-staff training schools, one in Jakarta, Indonesia — where 60 percent of crew originate — and one in Manila, the Philippines, which accounts for 30 percent of crewmembers.

The school in Jakarta, known as ms Nieuw Jakarta, was started 26 years ago and has continued to expand over the years. In a year when a newbuild will be delivered, more than a thousand trainees pass through the school to meet the increased demand for crew.

When applying to the school, Camarena explained, new students are given an English test to assess their level of competence. If they pass the test and meet other recruiting requirements, such as having previous hotel experience, they are admitted to an intense program that lasts a minimum of eight weeks.

All newbies spend the first five weeks in English classes making sure they can communicate effectively with Holland America Line guests. Once that course is passed, students move on to train in a specific area, such as housekeeping or dining room wait staff.

Students mastering dining room wait staff skills attend classes in uniform to authenticate the experience

At the ms Nieuw Jakarta school, everything is set up to emulate the shipboard milieu so crew can become familiar with the smallest details. Mock cabins have HAL linens and layouts, and dining room tables are set with HAL china, crystal and flatware, according to Camarena.

During a class, students are exposed to actual HAL food and beverage accessories

Once the crew have mastered their new skills and passed a final English exam, they are distributed among Holland America Line’s 13 ships. The class’ top performers earn the distinction of crewing on the newbuild.

The training doesn’t stop once they leave school, though. Employees are required to return to school in order to move up the promotion ladder, for refresher courses and to polish their skills. They also serve as mentors to new students.

The school in Manila opened its doors in February 2007. Currently offering dining room and front office training for new hires and refresher courses for repeaters, the school plans to offer a galley program by the end of the year. English courses aren’t offered in Manila, as English is widely spoken and the Filipinos’ language skills usually meet or exceed HAL’s requirements.

Next we’ll tell you what Camarena will do on board Eurodam to get the crew passenger-ready in time for the ship to welcome its first guest.

More Float Out Images

Here are two more images from Friday’s float out. The image of the bottle breaking was taken by Eurodam Chief Engineer Frank de Vries.

A bottle of champagne smashes against the Eurodam name at the beginning of the floating out ceremony

The two Euro coins, placed by Madrina Anneke Dullaert, on display for everyone to view