The flower line on a preference sheet is usually one box with the words favourite flowers next to it. Guests write roses, or peonies, or they leave it blank, and the chief stewardess is left to guess the rest. Then somebody turns out to be unable to sit at a table with lilies on it, and the whole thing is sorted out on the morning of the charter.
Five better questions, and what to do with the answers.
Why favourite flowers is the wrong question
Because it asks about a flower rather than about the person's experience of a room. A guest who writes peonies in February is asking for something that may not exist that week, and a guest who writes nothing has not told you they cannot stand the smell of lilies.
What you actually need is the shape of the brief: what must not happen, where the flowers go, and what the owner's eye is used to. Get those and the choice of stems takes care of itself.
Scent: which flowers are too strong for a cabin
This is the single most common complaint, and it is entirely avoidable.
Oriental lilies, tuberose, hyacinth, narcissus and heavy stock are wonderful in a hallway and oppressive in a cabin with the door shut and the air conditioning running. A scent that reads as luxurious at eleven in the morning is a headache by midnight in a space of twelve square metres.
The rule we work to on board: strong scent in the lobby and the entrance, where people pass through. Nothing with real perfume in a sleeping cabin, and nothing with perfume on a dining table, where it competes with the food and with the wine. The guest who asks for fragrance can have it in the places where they will walk past it.
Allergies: ask about pollen, not about flowers
Someone who says they are allergic to flowers almost always means pollen, and that is a far easier problem to solve than it sounds.
Lily stamens come out before the arrangement ever reaches the interior, which removes most of the pollen and incidentally saves the linen. Some varieties carry very little pollen at all. Orchids, and most of what we would put on a dining table anyway, are a quiet choice for a guest with hay fever.
Put the question on the sheet as a plain one: does anyone in the party have hay fever or a pollen allergy. The answer takes one word and changes what we buy.
Pets: lilies and cats
Worth its own line on the sheet, because the stakes are high and almost nobody asks.
True lilies are seriously toxic to cats, and not only if the cat eats the flower. The pollen on the fur, licked off later, and the water in the vase are both enough. It is a veterinary emergency, and on a boat in the islands that is a problem with no good solution. If there is a cat on board, the whole lily family stays off the boat, including the ones sold as oriental and asiatic.
Dogs are less dramatic but not immune. Amaryllis bulbs and tulips cause real trouble if chewed. If a dog has the run of the boat, say so and we work around it.
Colour: what they dislike matters more than what they like
Ask the question the other way round. Nobody struggles to answer what colour they cannot stand, and that answer is far more useful than a favourite, because it tells you the one arrangement that will ruin the room.
Then look at the interior rather than the guest. A white and pale wood saloon takes almost anything. A dark panelled interior swallows deep reds and purples completely and needs the arrangement to carry its own light. Owners who have lived with a boat for years usually have a palette they have settled on, and the fastest way to get it right is to photograph two or three arrangements that worked and keep them on file.
Where the arrangements actually go
The last question, and the one that saves the most work. Which surfaces, in which rooms, and in whose containers.
Dining table arrangements stay below the sightline across the table. Cabin flowers are small, unscented and on a surface that is not the bedside table, where a glass of water will eventually meet them. Nothing goes within reach of a drink on a table that moves. Nothing goes on top of anything electrical. On a gimballed table, nothing tall.
And say which vases are on board, because the height of your containers decides the length of the stems we cut. That is a two line answer that prevents half the problems on delivery day. How delivery itself works is here.
Turn the answers into a standing brief
The point of asking better questions is that you only ask them once. Scent, allergies, pets, the colours the owner will not have and the containers on board do not change from charter to charter. Send them to us once and we keep them, and every order after that is a date and a port rather than a conversation.
There is one more reason to do this in the autumn rather than in the season. If the boat is going foreign for the winter, the import permit for each destination is built on a species list, and that list should be drawn from the real brief rather than from a guess. Flowers nobody can tolerate have no business being on the permit, and the ones the owner always wants need to be on it. The winter ports and what each one needs are set out here, and the Riviera side is here.
The next step
Send Maxime a message on WhatsApp with the answers to those five questions for your boat. We will write them down once, and you will not have to explain them again.