Building competence in Hotel, Deck and Engine teams

These challenges are only likely to accelerate further, with the sector expected to see between 10 and 20 new ships introduced per year until 2027. The job is getting more complicated too, expedition cruising, for example, is one of the fastest-growing segments, but with it comes the added challenges of operating in some of the most environmentally sensitive regions, along with extra issues ranging from ice navigation to managing encounters with sea life and waste management.

CLIA (Cruise Line International Association) estimates that the cruise sector needs 73,000 new people per year to accommodate current growth, and the challenge is further compounded due to many cruise staff exiting the industry during the covid shutdown. With the return to cruising, a great many companies are having to rapidly rebuild entire shore and ship teams from scratch, not an easy challenge.

While a commercial vessel such as a tanker or containership might have an average of 20 crewmembers, a large cruise ship can have upwards of 2,000 crew. Every crew member is required to have their STCW certificates and safety training to be prepared and qualified to work at sea.

Beyond having the requisite number of people to safely operate the ships, having people with the right experience and skills is critical to providing a high-quality guest experience. That means not only ensuring that they have the right basic training but also that they understand what is expected of them in their role and the standards expected in line with the company’s vision, mission and values.

So, being able to quickly recruit and deploy people that are adequately prepared with the right training to perform in their roles has become more important than ever.

Thankfully technology provides us with a growing number of options to solve these problems.  

E-assessment tools such as those developed by OTG can provide an accurate and objective picture of a candidate as part of the interview and screening process. Recruiters can easily assess a potential member’s technical knowledge, their English language proficiency, a critical skill for interacting with guests. Ability testing and personality profiling tools can help in building the right teams and now, thanks to the creative use of AI proctoring, these assessments can even be taken without the candidate being physically present.

To be compliant, it’s important to ensure your new hires have the right certification and again, flexible pathways to flag approved certification can now be offered for many of the staple courses such as Security Awareness and Crisis Management.

It’s not hard to see why the use of e-learning as a route to certification continues to grow. The current cruise recruitment drive requires a high intake of new hotel personnel to be trained and certificated quickly, while existing crew pools may need rapid recertification. Attendance at shore training centres can create logistical bottlenecks slowing down crew mobilisation as well as incur travel and hotel costs.  

Online learning enables employers and recruiters to train, assess and certify people quickly, in any location, with no limit on volume. In selecting digital courses, companies are assured that all crew are trained and assessed to the same standard, regardless of where they are physically located.

To ensure quality standards, Ocean Technologies Group and its training brands Marlins, Seagull, and Videotel have a long history of working with maritime administrations on learning content and assessment, including the NMA, the UK MCA, Liberia ship registry, Marshall Islands and Bahamas flags.

Each OTG course blends multimedia learning content, including animation, videos, interactive tasks and images and offers the added advantage of enabling learners to study in their own time.  

Whilst many of these courses and certificates can be purchased on a pay-as-you-go basis from the OTG online shop increasingly Cruise operators are seeing the benefit of implementing the Ocean Learning Platform (OLP), an on-demand subscription service that offers over 900 courses to help fulfil the training requirements of Hotel, deck and Engine departments.

OLP is equipped with a comprehensive learning library, covering the needs of deck, tech and engine teams, including training specifically for hotel and hospitality crew. Accessible on the vessel network, online and on mobile, OLP offers true 24/7 access to all the learning crew needs for compliance and to consistently deliver exceptional guest experience. Whilst training can happen in multiple places, the results are synched to a central database in the cloud, allowing seamless and centralised management and reporting.

The platform also benefits from integrated partner services. Using cloud-based simulation from Wartsila, deck and engine staff can build and assess skills at scale and through a first-of-its-kind collaboration with hospitality training leaders Lobster Ink, OTG can offer over 100 modules aimed to upskill the Hotel team in front of house, housekeeping, bartending, cooking techniques and restaurant hosting.

Cruise operators also need to be able to deploy their own brand and procedure-specific training, but once again technology is making that easier than ever. The Ocean Learning Platform includes a “Rapid E-Learning’ authoring tool that enables administrators to quickly create e-learning modules of their own. 

As the cruise industry continues to expand rapidly, addressing the challenges of recruiting, training, and certifying a large and diverse workforce becomes increasingly critical. Leveraging advanced technological solutions such as e-assessment tools and comprehensive e-learning platforms enables cruise operators to efficiently build competent Hotel, Deck, and Engine teams. By embracing these innovations, the industry can ensure that crew members are well-prepared to deliver high-quality guest experiences while maintaining safety and regulatory compliance. This plus the willingness of progressive partners to collaborate in efforts to solve customer pain points is making it increasingly possible to meet the evolving demands of modern cruising.

https://oceantg.com/cruise/