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Hornblower Group

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Hornblower Needs Improvement - Front of House Hornblower Group Employee Review

1.0
Jun 14, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great views. Co-workers are pretty awesome. Some of the boats are very nice. Safety is taken seriously.

Cons

Management does not keep its word. Phone calls are not returned AT ALL. Emails are not answered AT ALL. The salary that was stated in my interview still has not come through - even though I meet the requirements - and it's been almost four months. Scheduling is not done in a fair manner. The person in charge of scheduling is vindictive and will screw you over in a heartbeat. The people that they bring in from agencies are paid more than their own employees - plus Hornblower has to pay the agency a fee, so basically they are paying about $20 - $30 total for an agency person (to work as server or bartender) and they pay their own servers and bartenders $10 an hour to start. Industry average for this type of work is $16 per hour. This company does not care about this discrepancy in pay at all. There are several either completed or ongoing lawsuits against this company regarding discrimination or other kinds of unfair and illegal treatment. This company has plenty of capital to invest on growing their company but will not pay a fair wage to its food & beverage employees who work on the boats for hours while sweating and running up and down stairs carrying heavy items and doing a great job.

Explore other reviews about Hornblower Group

5.0
Oct 23, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Loved being a guide here! Was my dream job.

Cons

Not many hours in the winter unfortunately

3.0
Jun 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The pay is good and the job itself is secure. While the bare minimum, it is important. There also is a sense of community that is tightly knit. If you're like me and are just desperate for a secure job that pays decent regardless of the workload, workspace or coworkers, this is fine.

Cons

Welcome to Hornblower where we criticize first and communicate later. This job is very unfriendly to complete beginners. Progress is measured through word of mouth, and the training is lackluster. If you don't get everything right the first time, you will be forever looked at as someone inferior. When you make a mistake, people here are quicker to humiliate, criticize and judge you for it, than they are to communicate, compromise and teach. The online training modules (of which a good portion of is useless if you have common sense) that are required for your job are literally mentioned as being "unequal to proper onsite training" when the "onsite training" in question is just showing you all the boats. Once you're on the boat, everyone just automatically assumes you know what to do and how to do it flawlessly like a god. Everyone knows how you SHOULD do, what you SHOULD be doing, but never communicates it. But hey, if you're someone like me who's on the spectrum and learns at a different, slower speed than their impatient unrealistic expectations, you'll get sentenced to do "bottom of the barrel" work that mostly consists of you being paid to sit and do nothing during company time. Work of which that while important, never feels like it. And while a good chunk of your coworkers are "less than savory" thankfully you don't need to interact with them.

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