A former manager at a luxury private jet firm has spread her wings with a new business.

Jessica Crumley, who worked at Longtail Aviation for several years in customer services, has launched JC Corporate Consultants, a specialist in corporate events, staff appreciation and project management.

Ms Crumley, who later worked as office manager at Hamilton Re and masterminded the creation of the firm’s award-winning new offices on Pitts Bay Road in Hamilton, said: “A private jet has a huge hospitality factor — you have to come up with the ‘wow’ factor every single trip.

“In reinsurance, you have to come up with great ways to entertain people and make sure they have a good time.

“I decided I had been doing this for everybody else all these years and that I should do it for myself.”

Ms Crumley, who has a degree in hotel, restaurant and tourism administration, worked for the Marriott hotel chain in the US in senior positions before moving to Bermuda.

She said: “The primary services I provide are arranging, preparing and carrying out client events to show appreciation to clients.

“I aim for something new and out of the box, not the usual cookie-cutter giveaways that clients throw in the cupboard when they get home.”

Ms Crumley said she worked to tailor events for staff members or clients to take account of age and preference.

“For example, I’m working with a client where the vast majority of their team are 75 years old. You’re not going to plan a team building event where they race along the beach. If it’s a group of 20-year-olds, I wouldn’t be doing shuffleboard.

“I work with the clients to get the gist of what they need and I put together a plan.”

Ms Crumley said she saw her target market as local businesses, rather than the international sector, although she has done work in that area since launching the business six months ago.

“Typically, local businesses don’t have someone on the payroll who does this sort of thing. It’s just easier to outsource because nobody has to worry about it.

“Everybody wants to feel good about the place they work and the job they do.

“There is a strong market if you can do it with an affordable budget. I know great ways to do it and that gets back to local businesses not being in a position to give big raises or bonuses.

“They can’t compete in that area with international business, but there are ways to build their team and show them they are valued — I’m educating local businesses in how to do that.

“If people have fantastic staff, they want to retain them and I want to help make that happen. If people have wonderful clients, they want to retain them too.”

Ms Crumley added that JC Corporate Consultants also offers a full project management service for residential or commercial expansion.

“No one has time to deal with a contractor, planning and babysit the workers who are looking after this. Somebody needs to take care of that and make sure things are done correctly, on time and to code.”

And Ms Crumley said: “It’s been great so far and it’s definitely been building up. The Christmas season was fantastic — a lot of employers said Christmas is around the corner and that they hadn’t done anything for their team yet.

“We can do very small things on a monthly basis that take an hour or an hour-and-a-half on a Friday afternoon that cost next to nothing, but make people feel fantastic.”

For more information, visit the JC Corporate Consultants website at http://jccorporateconsultants.com