Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, springtime vacations in South Florida are still on. Limitations like ceasing alcohol sales after 10 p.m. and the midnight curfew in Miami-Dade County have been implemented. However, these limitations aren’t stopping many travelers from coming to South Florida.
“The amount of people that are coming down to the area, for the long term or short term, is pretty high at this point,” said Bill Walker, Principal of Water Taxi.
According to Bill, they’ve seen a lot of people from the northeast, escaping from the cold weather.
“Most of it is people coming from all over the United States. We have heavy traffic from the New England, New York and Washington D.C. quarters as well,” said Bill.
“We’ve seen a ton of people who come down here on vacation and then have decided to stay. I see a lot of people who work from the hotel or Airbnb they’re renting until 2 or 3 in the afternoon then they’re out enjoying the water,” said Greg Farley, General Manager or Water Taxi.
The pandemic forced management to layoff and furlough all of their 125 employees. Slowly rebounding, now the Water Taxi is hiring, offering more than 30 positions including maintenance technicians, deck hands and captains.
“We’re hiring for all of the captain positions available, so it’s a wide variety of candidates that we look at. To attain your captains license, you have to accumulate a number of sea time, 365 days working at sea. So every shift an employee works here, it accumulates their sea time,” said Greg.
This giving opportunities for employees, like Liz Schmidt, to not only get paid but also accomplish her dream of obtaining a captains license.
“Management has been really awesome with knowing with that is my goal and working with me on my training. Getting me on the right size boat so I can get that training accomplished and working towards getting me ready for that test,” said Liz.
“We are certainly a phenomenal vehicle for people to attain their coastguard licenses and move into different aspects of the marine field,” said Bill.
Bill says they are following social distancing guidelines and employees are required to wear masks. For information and to apply, click here or call 954-467-6677.
