Billy Tait

Billy grew up in Durban, on the eastern edge of South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast. From his school window he saw every other ship out of Durban was a cruise ship, so it is no surprise that he went straight from scholarship to seamanship. He joined the MSC Cruises on trips to the Indian Ocean Islands, the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and the west coast of Africa before taking two years out to study Tourism Management at University in Pretoria. On graduation he moved on to a successful travel agent role at Flight Centre in Johannesburg. The sea, however, was a stronger pull than the air, and after re-joining MSC he was soon recruited to join the launch team for MSC’s mega-cruiser MSC Meraviglia. In 2017 he decided to make the move from big to small when he started working in small ship cruising for Noble Caledonia as a Tour Manager and Assistant Cruise Director/Expedition Leader. Following inevitable unemployment when the pandemic struck the South African economy, he took a dream job in the bush working as a Service Supervisor at the world-renowned Lion Sands Private Game Reserve. In 2022 Billy then re-joined the small ship expedition field and has since travelled to seven continents with his favourite destinations being the polar regions of Antarctic and Greenland.