How can you get to work in a cruise ship?

Question

as a travel agent

Answer 1

There are two ways to work as a travel agent with a cruise line.  One way is to work in the cruise line's headquarter's offices as a telephone cruise line certified vacation planner.  Cruise lines like Carnival and Royal Caribbean have their corporate offices in Miami and you may or may not work at that location.  I have talked with cruise consultants about my cruises and the people I talked with were in cities other than Miami.

The other way to work as a travel agent is to serve as a 'FUTURE CRUISE CONSULTANT" on a cruise ship.  I have been on many cruises lately and they all have a future cruise consultant.  I know for sure that Norwegian, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity have them on ship.  When you work on the ship you will usually have some other duties besides doing future cruises for passengers.  I am not sure what those duties are but I know that the future cruise consultants do not have office hours every day all day long.  So they must be doing something else.

So you need to contact the cruise lines directly to inquire about these two type positions; future cruise consultant and/or  telephone cruise line "Certified Vacation Planner".

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/home/n2bh....

This is from Royal Caribbean's web site:

"Our Royal Caribbean Certified Vacation Planners offer:

Extensive cruise planning experience

Personal attention

Planning made easy and exciting"

This is from Carnival's web site:

"With so many fantastic cruise options, you could probably use some help picking the sailing that's right for you. Our Personal Vacation  Planners will be glad to provide you with:

Guaranteed best stateroom rates and availability

Exclusive training on Carnival ships and destinations

Expert knowledge of Carnival shore excursions

One-on-one vacation planning assistance

Convenient access to accompanying airfare

Insider travel tips and advice

Advance notice of upcoming sales



Call 1-888-CARNIVAL.

Have a Personal Vacation Planner call you.  "

I think these are the positions you are looking for.

On their web sites you will find a link to jobs, employment, human resources or some such link that will give you information about their positions. Some sites even have current vacancies they are recruiting for. Several cruise lines have new ships coming out soon so opportunities will be there. Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Disney and some others will have new ships launched in the next couple years.

Here are some links:

The luxury cruise lines are:

REGENT SEVEN SEAS:

http://www.rssc.com/

RADISSON:

http://www.cruisingluxury.com/Radisson.....

SILVER SEAS:

http://www.silversea.com/

CRYSTAL:

http://www.crystalcruises.com/home.asp.....

AZAMARA:

http://www.azamaracruises.com/07/azama.....

Other cruise lines that most people go on:

CUNARD:

http://www.cunard.com/

HOLLAND AMERICA

http://www.hollandamerica.com/

CELEBRITY:

http://www.celebritycruises.com/home .

ROYAL CARIBBEAN:

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/gohome.d.....

NORWEGIAN:

http://www.ncl.com/

PRINCESS:

http://www.princess.com/index.html

CARNIVAL:

http://www.carnivalcruiselines.com/

DISNEY:

http://disneycruise.disney.go.com/dcl/.....

Then there are some that operate out of Europe:

P&O:

http://www.pocruises.com/pocruising/Ho.....

STAR:

http://www.starcruises.com/newweb/main.....

COSTA:

http://www.costacruise.com/B2C/USA/Def.....

MSC:

http://www.msccruisesusa.com/

I know that on Royal Caribbean's site if you go to the bottom of their home page and click on OUR COMPANY it will take you to a page where career opportunities are listed by category: http://www.royalcaribbean.com/ourCompany...

Then there are more links that will let you see and download job requirements. Celebrity Cruise line is a RC affiliate and so you should be able to get similar information from them the same way. here's a link to their jobs page: http://www.celebritycruises.com/aboutcel...

Here's Norwegian Cruise line: http://www.ncl.com/nclweb/cruiser/cmsPag...

Answer 2

Cruise lines generally don't hire travel agents to work aboard ships.

I think Holland America tried this, but if you have a travel agent booking onboard the ship it gives them an unfair advantage over the other travel agents.

Most cruise lines will have what they call "loyalty ambassadors" or "on-board" or "future cruise consultants"  these are not travel agents, but part of the crew.   Their primary duties are to assist guest with future cruise bookings and making sure the repeat guests are happy.  

You usually cannot get hired for these positions.  Most people in these positions start out in something else aboard ship and then get these positions through internal promotions.