Barbados Pacts With Royal Caribbean To Hire Cruise Crew

Barbados’ government this week signed a memorandum of understanding with Royal Caribbean International to employ Bajans in “a wide range” of cruise ship jobs said Lisa Cummins, the country’s minister of tourism and international transport. Barbados will also relocate its cruise operations office from the country’s capitol in Bridgetown to Miami.

“If we know one thing about Barbados, it is that Barbadians are well known for hospitality, especially when it comes to our cruise partners,” Cummins said at a press briefing announcing the agreement at the Seatrade Cruise Global conference in Miami.

“We’re looking forward to this new partnership with Royal Caribbean,” Cummins added, “and getting Barbadians employed aboard cruise ships traveling the world, taking our hospitality with it, and working with you to develop even more opportunities.”

Royal Caribbean employs 50,000 international crew, with 15 to 20 percent of those positions turning over annually, said Michael Bayley, Royal Caribbean’s CEO. As a result, the company hires 10,000 new crewmembers each year to replace outgoing staff.

Another 6,000 or more new crew are required to staff the two to three new ships the company adds each year, Bayley said. A recruitment fair will be held in six to eight weeks; the line will take another four to eight weeks to assign new hires to vessels.

“At the new tourism authority and the new Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BMTI) we are under a mandate to talk about opportunity for our people within these travel sectors, so it was so important we met with [Royal Caribbean] and reached this agreement,” said Shelly Williams, chair of the BTMI and the Barbados Tourism Product Authority.

“When I looked at the list of jobs that will be available to our Barbadians, we’re talking about [positions] from engineering to carpenters to plumbers to electricians to seamen to people in sports and youth. That is the largest cross section I have ever seen,” Williams said. “I think [Royal Caribbean] is now going to lead the way for other discussions from other cruise lines for us to have this kind of relationship.”

Bayley said Barbados was instrumental in helping the company repatriate guests and crew stranded on ships across the Caribbean at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Barbados officials permitted cruise ships to disembark travelers in the country and fly home from Barbados as other Caribbean nations closed their borders to travelers.

Additionally, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley joined Bayley as co-chair of a key Caribbean task force that helped establish uniform health guidelines across the region, enabling cruise activity to resume.

“Barbados was incredibly supportive and helpful in allowing Royal Caribbean and other cruise companies to bring their ships to Bridgetown and to arrange charter flights literally to all over the world,” Bayley confirmed. “We got I think maybe 20,000 of our crew off our ships in Barbados and we got them home. It would not have been possible if not for the cooperation of the people of Barbados.”

Barbados will relocate its cruise operations to Miami by the late summer or fall of this year, Cummins said. The government will first hire a senior business development officer to establish the new office, followed by the hiring of a director of cruise operations.

Cummins described the Miami office as instrumental in maintaining relationships with Miami-based cruise lines. “Our cruise operations will be anchored out of our Miami office with support from our Barbados office so that we’re constantly in recruiting rule we’re constantly in training mode and we’re constantly in developmental mode,” she said.