Staffing a NCL Ship

[SeaShark]

On 7/31/2020 at 9:25 AM, SeaShark said:

My concern in all this is that given the length of this "pause" and the uncertainty behind its end date, many crew might just decide to give up on cruise ship work and move on to other jobs. Then when things finally do start up again, we're going to see ships with a greater percentage of rookie crew members than we have seen in the past.

 

Letting all that experience walk away is going to cause the service experience to suffer.

 

I posted the above a little more than 2 years ago and received a bit of blowback as a result.

 

Given recent events, I thought it was a good topic to revisit.

 

Lately we have seen:

 

--Carnival has announced a number of service reductions...due to staffing issues.

--NCL is contacting people booked on the PoA with "sorry, were cancelling your booking because we don't have enough staff to serve you"

--We've seen a number of reports of limited or no availability of kid's clubs due to staffing issues.

--Princess had announced the outright cancellation of 11 sailings of the Diamond Princess because of issues staffing the ship.

 

As I predicted, a number of cruise workers who found themselves out of a job due to the pandemic have simply made the choice to move on to other jobs in other fields. I wonder if the naysayers are willing to revise their positions? 

[em-sk]

14 minutes ago, SeaShark said:

 

I posted the above a little more than 2 years ago and received a bit of blowback as a result.

 

Given recent events, I thought it was a good topic to revisit.

 

Lately we have seen:

 

--Carnival has announced a number of service reductions...due to staffing issues.

--NCL is contacting people booked on the PoA with "sorry, were cancelling your booking because we don't have enough staff to serve you"

--We've seen a number of reports of limited or no availability of kid's clubs due to staffing issues.

--Princess had announced the outright cancellation of 11 sailings of the Diamond Princess because of issues staffing the ship.

 

As I predicted, a number of cruise workers who found themselves out of a job due to the pandemic have simply made the choice to move on to other jobs in other fields. I wonder if the naysayers are willing to revise their positions? 

 

Global problem in many industries.  

 

Not certain about the Philippines and other countries where NCL recruits from.  Here in Canada we are also hitting the point where many of the baby boomers are hitting the age where early or semi-retirement is a viable option.  That is freeing up positions in various industries.  

 

Even BC Ferries (the local ferry service) on the west coast of Canada is cancelling sailings left right and center.  They claim it is due to difficult recruiting licensed staff. 

 

Given PoA is a US flagged ship with US nationals, NCL is drawing from an even smaller pool of people than the other ships.  That is going to be challenging. 

[BirdTravels]

On 8/2/2020 at 10:35 AM, drvmywifecrzy said:

How do you know this data?

Because the chief was a senior officer for NCL. 

Edited August 9, 2022 by BirdTravels

[BermudaBound2014]

2 hours ago, SeaShark said:

As I predicted, a number of cruise workers who found themselves out of a job due to the pandemic have simply made the choice to move on to other jobs in other fields. I wonder if the naysayers are willing to revise their positions? 

 

I wasn't a naysayer in this conversation, but I will add that according to crew social, many of the crew would like to return but they won't do that with mask mandates and vaccine requirements. 

[scooter6139]

NCL originally just moved crew around to staff ships in use.  When we went on the Encore as their first cruise back to Alaska in August of last year, most of the crew we interacted with came from the Joy.

[www3traveler]

Keep in made all the staff changes being made through out the system with staff being a assigned to The Prima.  She is due to sail for the 1st time in a few weeks.  Other than the Opening Captain, General Manager and Cruise Director, I have not heard yet which specific crew members have been assigned to the Prima.

[PATRLR]

17 hours ago, BermudaBound2014 said:

 

I wasn't a naysayer in this conversation, but I will add that according to crew social, many of the crew would like to return but they won't do that with mask mandates and vaccine requirements. 

I'm sure this is part of the problem.  I think it's well understood that similar requirements impacted similar businesses in the US.

22 minutes ago, www3traveler said:

Keep in made all the staff changes being made through out the system with staff being a assigned to The Prima.  She is due to sail for the 1st time in a few weeks.  Other than the Opening Captain, General Manager and Cruise Director, I have not heard yet which specific crew members have been assigned to the Prima.

While staffing a new ship doesn't help, this isn't the first time they've added a ship and they didn't have these problem with the other ships because of the new one.

 

 

[BermudaBound2014]

I'm sure this has been mentioned already, but Princess just cancelled 11 sailings out of San Diego (the entire fall season) due to staffing issues. 

 

Now, I would also propose these sailings are the very same that were not selling well, at all. So, did they really cancel due to staffing or the fact that they can't turn a profit with 20% occupancy? I suspect we will never really know.