How do I go about working on a cruise ship?

Question

I am from England and would like to do something different by working on a cruise ship for maybe 6 months possibly more, does anybody know the best way to go about doing this or is there a good website to go on and apply? I am looking to do bar, waitressing or something like that. Can anyone help!!?

Answer 1

First, be  creative thinker...if you want to work at a certain restaurant in your town, how do you go about it?  You go to that place and apply.  Same with cruise lines.  Go to the website of each cruiseline.  Each has a spot on their website for "career opportunities, or"employment options"...or a similar phrase.  Look at the Carnival site below...under "about Us"  it says "Fun Jobs"..click that.  each company has a similar spot.  If you cannot find it on a certain site, try "contact us".  You can also enter"cruise ship jobs" in the search bar...there are tons of places listed under that.

Answer 2

You need to contact the cruise lines directly. 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.

Links are below:

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. 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.

Another thing to do is to contact the concession that run the shops on the ships like the souvenir, gift and clothing shops. Below are links for you.

http://www.steinerleisure.com/

and

http://www.hardingbros.co.uk/

The luxury cruise lines are:

REGENT SEVEN SEAS:

RADISSON:

SILVER SEAS:

CRYSTAL:

AZAMARA:

Other cruise lines that most people go on:

CUNARD:

HOLLAND AMERICA

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/

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 don't think you can sign on for just six months.  The people whom I have talked to who work on cruise ships say they have to sign a contract for about 9 months and then they get a couple months off.  While working they do work 7 days a week and the hours are long and in many cases a split shift with work mornings, afternoon and/or evening, depending upon what staff are needed and where.

Yahoo will not let me list any more than 10 web sites but you can find the others by just doing a Google search.