Cruise Career Springboard to provide ‘steady funnel of future apprentices’

The Cruise Career Springboard has outlined aims to develop more pathways into careers in cruise as it launched the course for its fourth year on Majestic Princess in Southampton.

 

A total of 36 students embarked on the ship for the day from three colleges: Itchen Sixth Form College near Southampton, the North East Surrey College of Technology and Farnborough College of Technology.

 

The day featured interviews hosted by Clia trainer Steve Paddit with Princess Cruises’ team to give students an idea of the range of jobs available in the industry, alongside a ship tour of Majestic Princess and a visit to Carnival UK’s head office.

 

Programme founders Edwina and Matthew Lonsdale of Mundy Cruising said developing future job opportunities and encouraging cruise lines to take on more apprentices shoreside was a crucial aim for the future.

 

Edwina Lonsdale told Travel Weekly: “First of all, we want the students to take away that they want to work in cruise.

 

“We also want them to be out there talking about how great cruising as a holiday is with their own network, but the final thing for us is to get the cruise lines on board with developing their own recruitment. It doesn’t have to be apprenticeships, but why not have apprenticeships?”

 

Matthew Lonsdale added: “If we do have apprenticeships, then we can provide a steady funnel of 30 people a year who are interested and I think it will be a while before cruise line vacancies exceed that.”

 

They revealed Mundy Cruising took on an apprentice from the programme last year who is now working in their marketing department as they said it had been “wonderful” to see how the training it had “opened the eyes” of students who had previously not considered a career cruise.

 

They urged more cruise companies to get involved and praised those who have committed to the scheme thus far, with about 20 lines offering ship visits or training over the course of the programme’s development since 2022.

 

This year’s mentors include former Celebrity Cruises EMEA managing director Jo Rzymowska, former Silversea managing director Peter Shanks and former managing director of Regent Seven Seas Cruises Graham Sadler.

 

Rzymowska said “the big thing” for cruise lines to consider with apprentices from this programme was their range of experiences across the whole industry and honed presentation and communication skills.

 

“It is significant,” she said, adding: “One of the barriers from cruise lines which I understand is they are so busy and they are worried about being able to spend time to focus on an apprentice, but whoever you take on, you need to make sure they have a great induction.

 

“This cohort will have even greater experience, and the programme is taking a lot of the heavy lifting away.”

 

Rzymowska said the programme tried to address the issue of travel and tourism courses which historically focused solely on aviation.

 

Shanks said: “We have got cruise across to agents now, but we still have a challenge to get young people to think about the cruise industry as a career.”

 

He added: “It is terrific to bring youngsters into the industry and I don’t think there’s enough coordination between colleges and cruise lines.

 

“The trick here is to work as hard as we can to get cruise lines to be supportive s to what happens at the end of the process.”