Here’s what cruise employees have been doing while the industry has been docked
After spending much of the last 25 years at sea, Miami-based cruise photographer Michel Verdure has been sidelined on land by the COVID-19 pandemic. As virus outbreaks overcame cruise ships in March 2020, Verdure disembarked Royal Caribbean’s Celebrity Silhouette ship in Aruba and flew back to South Florida. He wouldn’t board another cruise ship for more than a year.
Known for his attention to architectural detail and stunning aerial angles, Verdure is a go-to photographer for many of the South Florida-based cruise companies. He had hoped to reach at least 300 cruises before retiring. The Celebrity cruise last March was his number 284.
Instead of jetting off to France and Japan to photograph new and renovated ships, Verdure has spent the last year catching up on routine tasks: organizing files, selling old camera equipment on Ebay, tackling home repair projects. To make ends meet, he sold a second home near Jupiter, Florida, he and his wife had planned to live in when he retired.
“I put all my eggs in the same basket many years ago,” he said. “I love the cruise industry; that was my big passion. It was a fantastic ride for 25 years. And suddenly it fell apart.”
Before the pandemic, the three largest cruise companies — Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings — collectively employed about 24,000 people who worked on land in the U.S. and abroad and 201,000 people on ships. In 2020, the number of shore workers employed by the three companies around the world dropped 12% to 21,200 and ship employees dropped 17% to 167,000 according to the companies’ financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Among the the casualties was Ken Jones, former Vice President of Global Marketing for Carnival Corporation.
As the executive in charge of the company’s advertising and marketing, trade shows and website, Jones spent 300 days of the year traveling pre-pandemic. After joining the company in 2013, Jones went on to create the buzz-earning “Back to the Sea” Super Bowl commercial. In February 2020, things at Carnival had never looked better, he said.
One year after the pandemic erupted, Jones is the chief marketing officer of Celebrity Financial, a financial services holding company, and lives in Central Florida.
“If you would have told me a year ago I’d be talking to you from the suburbs in Tampa I would have thought you were crazy,” he said. “It’s a great lesson in humility and agility.”
Jones said he’s grateful to have landed on his feet so quickly — just a month after his Carnival departure in July, when the company made cuts to advertising and marketing. He doesn’t have immediate plans to return to the cruise industry but remains a supporter from the sidelines.
“I’m very bullish on the industry,” he said. “I’m still a shareholder of Carnival Corp. and will continue to be. All those ships will get underway when it’s appropriate and safe to do that. Hopefully that day is coming soon. Everyone is trying hard to understand how to do that effectively.”
Other former employees, still looking for work, declined to be interviewed. Guy Cote, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles focusing on hospitality and leisure executive search, said he’s seen a slowdown in cruise company external hires over the last year. Many industry workers who were let go are finding temporary work and hope to be hired back once the industry restarts in the U.S., he said. “Most people want to figure out a way to stay in the business,” he said.
The official employment figures from the large publicly held cruise lines don’t include workers who were furloughed or whose hours were cut. Nor do they include indirect employment — which in South Florida accounts for some 600,000 whose work as marketers, entertainers, artists, tour guides, bus and shuttle drivers, florists, food purveyors and hotel staff whose livelihoods depend on cruise visitors.
Those include Miami-based NewmanPR. To trim expenses, Carnival Cruise Line cut its 33-year arrangement with NewmanPR as its public relations firm of record. Newman continues to represent other Carnival Corporation entities including Holland America Line, Costa Cruises North American and Carnival Foundation, in addition to the Florida Keys and Key West Tourism Council.
NewmanPR President Andy Newman said the agency took a hard look at all its expenses and made cuts to everything from landline phones to delivered bottled water. Paycheck protection program funds from the federal Small Business Administration helped too, Newman said. In all, their staff of around 10 shrunk by two.
“It is what it is, it’s unprecedented times,” he said. “The only thing certain about COVID is the uncertainty.”
The firm pivoted its website to attract business outside the travel sector and plans to continue diversifying its client list. So far, Newman said, he’s had conversations with an underwater camera company and a social media marketing firm.
“When you’re faced with crises and challenges you try to take positive out of it,” he said of seeking out new clients. “One of those things is that we were so dependent on the travel and tourism, that’s all we had.”
NewmanPR was far from the only behind-the-scenes player that took a hit. Fort Lauderdale-based J.M. Field Marketing produces, packs and ships brochures and marketing materials for South Florida-based cruise companies. When the industry first shut down last year, Chief Operating Officer Ryan Schoeneck remembers having to recycle a lot of material.
Since then, Schoeneck said his company has been lucky; he’s seen a boom in business from e-commerce clients that has offset the lag in cruise orders. Only around five of the company’s 120 employees were furloughed last year, and he’s been able to maintain revenue. He’s seen a pickup in cruise businesses since the start of the year as companies plan for summer restarts.
“I’m in it for the long haul,” he said. “We offer a wide variety of services, we were fortunate in that aspect. We’re in it. We’re sitting here ready to go. Ready to help our clients as soon as the light gets switched back on.”
While cruises have remained stalled, Joyce Landry, CEO of global cruise charter logistics company Landry & Kling, has been forced to pivot from her core business before the pandemic — organizing business conferences and meetings on cruise ships — to focus on organizing floating workforce housing contracts for a mix of uses including mining expeditions and government security training exercises.
“We’ve been in ferries, barges, sightseeing boats, research vessels,” she said. “We’ve gotten involved in chartering all kinds of unusual vessels for unusual purposes.”
After all of her bookings for 2020 were canceled, Landry said she initially cut her staff of 10 people down to about four but has since been able to hire contractors in other countries as the company focuses more on international clients. She called a Paycheck Protection Program loan the company acquired from the federal government “a godsend;” she also received grant money from Miami-Dade County and deferments from her office landlord that helped her keep paying staff. She’s eager for U.S. cruises to restart, but says she won’t be giving up the new business the company has acquired in the meantime.
“Anyone who is an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur for a reason,” she said. “You’re not going to throw in the towel because some outside circumstances changed your business. You shift, you change.”
While most major lines aren’t planning restarts until June, some smaller lines are already kicking into gear.
Indiana-based American Queen Steamboat Company began river cruises in March and is now offering cruises on both its American Duchess and American Countess ships down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The cruises are operating at reduced capacity, and the company is testing passengers for COVID-19 before boarding. All passengers and crew will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 starting on July 1.
That restart brought opportunity for Miami hospitality PR veteran Mike Hicks. He joined the American Queen team in December as the director of marketing communications after leaving Brightline last year. His hiring was part of the company’s effort to recruit cruise talent from Florida; it now boasts 60 Floridians among its workforce. The company plans to open a satellite office in Broward County next year.
“Everybody is ramping up,” Hicks said of the hiring spree. “There’s so much talent, companies have discovered how much talent there is in South Florida... They’ve jumped on the opportunity.”
Despite corporate enthusiasm for restarting cruises, some workers remain skeptical. Musician Bruno Cruells has worked on cruise ships since 2016 and had planned to continue to work in the industry for at least a few more years. He was the musical director on Royal Caribbean Group’s Celebrity Infinity ship last March when the industry shut down. Several passengers and crew on his ship tested positive for COVID-19, and one crew member died from the virus.
For 80 days, Cruells waited at sea without pay to be flown home to Argentina. He has a hard time imagining ever boarding a ship again.
“It’s like someone that punches you in the face and then you don’t want to see that person again,” he said.
Since returning home in June, Cruells has been teaching music classes virtually. He’s been able to find clients in other parts of the world on social media. Still, he is living partly off his savings from his cruising days and financial assistance for artists he has received from the Argentine government. He has picked up a few gigs as a freelance composer, and hopes to transition to that kind of work full time.
He worries about how the industry will respond to the next crisis, and hopes companies will better prioritize crew member well-being.
“That’s my biggest fear about going back or my friends going back,” he said. “If something happens to them and they’re treated badly. At the same time I want them to have jobs, whoever wants to keep doing it.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2021 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Here’s what cruise employees have been doing while the industry has been docked."
