Ever thought about being a Cruise Director on a very large ship? - Your Moment In Travel

Claire, a cruise and travel director for Holland America, shares her background and responsibilities. She is the voice of the ship and ensures guests have a memorable experience. She provides entertainment, introduces shows, and gives enrichment talks about the regions they visit. On port days, she helps guests with logistics and welcomes them into the port. On sea days, she conducts interviews, enrichment talks, and tech classes. Holland America has added the role of travel director to promote presentations about the destinations they sail to. They also have a sports director who organizes various activities onboard. The cruise industry is embracing technology, with Starlink being rolled out on some ships to improve internet connectivity for guests and crew. Claire also gives talks on tech for travelers to help guests be more independent in port. The following interview was recorded on June 26, 2023 on board Holland America's new Staten Dome in Reykjavik, Iceland, and is a copyrighted production of the Call Radio Communications Group. Enjoy! So you want to be a cruise director on board a really big ship? Your moment in tech is next! Is being a cruise director all fun and games? Meet your cruise and travel director, Claire, to tell us all about it. Hey Claire, briefly tell us your background and what are your responsibilities? Yeah, of course. So, my background, I came from a performance background. I've been with Holland America eight years and I've always been on stage. I've always been a singer and a dancer and a presenter. I did a lot of public speaking and when I started with Holland America in 2015, I was in the production shows and I did that all the way up until 2020 and traveled all around the world with Holland America and decided that the travel aspect was really important to me. So when we did come back after the pause, they interviewed me for cruise and travel director. One, because of my stage experience, my presenting experience, but also now my years of traveling to some of the ports we've been to and that is really how I fell into cruise and travel director. I came into Holland America doing my passion, which was singing and dancing and then the ball started rolling into all these other careers on board that I never thought would be in my career trajectory, really. A few years later, cruise and travel director, I'm kind of the voice of the ship, really. So what are your responsibilities? Absolutely. So for cruise and travel director, number one, you are that calming influence, hopefully over the guests, that they know they've got someone to come to and they've got that recognizable voice that they can listen to and know they get the information they need. So one that is fronting the entertainment, we've got an amazing entertainment lead host who does all of the games and trivias and then we've got other sections of our department I'll talk about in a moment. So really it's introducing the shows, making sure the guests have that person there that's recognizable to host their entire experience. And then the travel director part is giving you enrichment talks to get you excited about the regions you're traveling around. So it's a whole voice and face that is hopefully calming and recognizable and personable for the guests so they feel like they're being welcome on board our ship, which is our team's home. It's like, come on board our home and let us show you a really good time. And that's really the responsibilities. I don't have any main people that report to me in that sense. I'm higher ranking in the department, but don't oversee anyone personally. That's where we have a lead host, which oversees our arts and crafts director, our sports director as well. But it's a brilliant job, really. My whole responsibility really, I suppose, is the guests themselves. So what is your typical day like? Oh, what a question. Okay, so a typical day, if we're in port like today, Reykjavik, for instance, I'll be hopefully the first voice you hear in the morning to let you know the logistics of everything, where the gangways are located, the all aboard times, how to get into port themselves. I will then be on the gangway for about an hour in the morning, just doing a bit of traffic directing, welcoming our guests into the port. So once again, they've got that familiar face if they need to ask questions too. We then usually have a morning meeting with the heads of department just to go over any concerns or events coming up so that all departments are in communication from F&B to housekeeping through the hotel, as well as entertainment. And then if it's a port day, sometimes I actually get to go and explore, which is really nice. And then I start as soon as all aboard is. I do that all aboard announcement. I introduce what's happening that evening. And then I will host most of the introductions for the evening entertainment. But if we're at a day at sea, it's another kettle of fish, let's say. That's how we say it in England. I'm not sure if it's the same elsewhere. But I will start nice and early with a morning chat in the morning where I interview a member or a couple of people from the ship, whether that's an engineer, a deck officer, or someone from entertainment. So it gets the guests knowing our team members personally, which is hopefully giving them a personable experience. I then usually do an enrichment talk or a port talk to explain the areas we're sailing. I then do a tech for travelers class. I maybe do another interview in the afternoon, and then we get going with that evening entertainment again. So a sea day for me, I'm looking at about 9 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. is my normal sea day. And a port day, when do you start? Yeah, so a port day, usually I start when we arrive. So if we arrive at 7 a.m., like we did in Reykjavik, then I'll be up at 7 a.m. doing gangway, and then all the way through to all aboard time, and then the evening entertainment. If we arrive at, let's say, 11 a.m. or midday into a port, I will do a morning's worth of sea day at sea activities before that port day. So there's always something to do, really, is the message there, I suppose. Okay. Moving on to a different subject, the title has changed. You're not only cruise director, but you are the travel director, Holland America has added that on. What does that encompass? Yeah, absolutely. So Holland America moved into cruise and travel director because the presentations that we sometimes get to do on stage, they wanted someone to be able to get the guests and the audience really excited about where they're sailing. So this now is presentations, maybe if you sail around Greece, there's a presentation about Greek mythology, or if you sail out of Amsterdam, there's a talk about the Rijksmuseum and cycling. And if you sail around Norway, there's a talk about Nordic pioneers and adventures. So the travel part, for one, means that we can start to present to our guests these wonderful EXE enrichment talks to enhance their travel experience. But we also offer Q&As about the ports coming up, so really it allows independent travelers the opportunity to be able to go out and know where they're docked. Maybe they've booked a taxi to pick them up, but they need to know the exact location. These kind of things are, for the cruise and travel director, the perfect opportunity for us to assist the guests to be independent travelers outside the ship as well. Okay. Also added, and we're going to throw this in real quick, is a sports director. We have him here. Vikas, tell us about what is your function? Well, first I would like to thank you for inviting me for this interview, and I'm really happy for that as well. And I will try to answer all of your questions. So all the sports activity that we do throughout the day, it consists of the normal cruise games like the shuffleboard, cornhole, then we have basketball, soccer, pickleball, and then some sports activities, tai chi, or you can say walk for a mile and on the deck for a cause. But the major activities is pickleball as well as the tai chi, because pickleball is now the fastest-growing sport in the U.S., and 38 million people are playing pickleball as of now. And Holland America is also now in the partnership with the Pickleball Association, basically professional pickleball association against the PPA as well. And then the second one is tai chi, which is every single morning. So people come and enjoy that class as well. Now, how proficient do you have to be in order to do that? How proficient are you at pickleball and tai chi and cornhole? Yes, so like as for my background in the school, I used to play soccer as well as cricket. And U.S. cricket is not much famous, but you can say a bit of transition of baseball, it's a bit similar. But for pickleball, I'm good at that. And when I joined the Coast Group, I started as a fitness trainer. So my background is from the fitness. So as a sports director, I'm much more good as well. Okay, thank you very much. Now, we need to go back to a few more points with Claire talking about tech, and how tech is becoming more a part of a cruise industry. Yeah, 100%. We find that a commodity that our guests always obviously need and ask for, especially nowadays, is the internet. The internet is something that when you're on a ship in the middle of the ocean, it is a thousand times more difficult than maybe your Wi-Fi router at home. And very interestingly now, that has come up in the last few years is all this talk about Starlink. So Starlink is hopefully so far working incredibly well, but it really is a future where we see a faster way to connect. Not only our guests to home and to video streaming, but also our team members, our crew members, who this is their home for months on end. It's a service that if it goes as well as it's going so far, could be an absolute life changer for a lot of team members who live months on end, sometimes away from their families. So Starlink is something that has started to be rolled out on one of our ships, the Konings Dam. The reviews sound incredible. We're really, really excited about this. As I said, not only for our guests, but for our team, it's such an important and very exciting change. And so far, the Konings Dam reviews have been amazing. So it looks like they've started to roll it out on the Zaddam as well. And so far, even Vikas said his friend, his colleague on the Zaddam has had a brilliant experience with it, and we're very excited to see how that rolls out on the rest of the fleet. You also do a talk on tech. Yes. So there's another thing they've added to the Cruise and Travel Director, which is a series of talks called Tech for Travelers. So Tech for Travelers, the first one is teaching guests or assisting guests to be more independent in port. We go through some features of Google Maps and of Wi-Fi Maps and a couple of apps that really assist your time in port. There's another one called Sharing Your Journey, which looks at your phone's ability to take really great photos, but also some tips on tricks in your settings to allow you to compose really great images. But also, oh, how would I say it, also explaining to guests how to share their images and share their journeys, but make sure that privacy is something they also take into consideration. Because especially, we see the internet growing these days, we've got Starlink, all these amazing things. On your phones now, there's all these incredible apps. But we also have to be incredibly mindful of security and privacy. So one of the talks is about device safety and how to keep your device as safe as possible. So Tech for Travelers is really interesting. It's a new thing that we've been trialing and bringing out on the ship and very popular. So we hope to keep that going as well. I look forward to seeing some of those. And then speaking about the future, where do you see, Claire, the future of the cruise industry going? That's really, really interesting. I'm going to do two kind of parts for this one. One, where I see Holland America going in general is that I know they're going to start focusing on cruises that offer a more of a variety of countries and itineraries, so legendary voyages, let's say, that are 29 days over. We've now got pole-to-pole grand voyages, which go to both Antarctica and across the Arctic Circle. So it's really focusing on people that want to explore more, really focusing on those travelers that want to go to these incredible ports. So that's quite exciting for the cruise industry. We're still keeping our seven-day cruises, but these longer voyages are going to be incredibly exciting for people that want to travel. The other thing is the environment. We have to look at how the world is changing. And there's so many areas, Venice, for instance, is one of those ports that a lot of us now can't sail into because of the laws that were passed in 2019. And really, it's going to be interesting to see how the cruise industry has, as it has always done in the past, starts to develop along with the environmental changes that are happening in the world. So I don't know what that means, but I know that seeing how Holland America, I mean, 150 years this year is our anniversary, and I've seen it develop so much in that 150 years that I don't know what's to come, but I'm excited to see how the cruise industry adapts to how the world is changing. So do you still think you want to become a cruise director? For your Moment in Tech, this is Jay Milner.