Despite the increasing importance of cruise tourism worldwide, very little is known about the lives of cruise-ship employees, and how they use their free time at the ports of call. This paper presents the results of a small-scale exploratory research on the activities of cruise crew and staff members on the island of Cozumel, Mexico, an important port of call for Caribbean routes.
Conducted in , qualitative research for this paper included participant observation and several informal conversations and semi-structured interviews with twenty cruise-ship employees and six owners and employees of local businesses. Our conclusions confirm other authors' findings and provide fresh information on the factors that determine these individuals' choices of activities, places and company. Availability of time and money depends on each worker's place in the labor hierarchy, but choices are also influenced by cultural background.
More in-depth research will be needed at the demand as well as the offer sides to complement these preliminary findings. Thousands of tourists travel around the globe while staying at a sailing hotel, dining in a floating restaurant. To make this possible, each cruise vessel also carries on board people who work in a great variety of jobs.
Besides those related to the ship operation and maintenance that is, the captain and the officers, technicians and seamen , there are the jobs at the resort hotel such as reception, housekeeping, kitchen and restaurant, entertainment, recreation, shops. Partly because they are strongly customer-oriented, cruise ships are very labor-intensive.
For every threeβsometimes even twoβpassengers, there is one employee on board. Seidl et al. For instance, a cruise ship like Carnival Conquest has a capacity of 2, passengers and a total crew of 1, members Carnival, Often the whole ship's personnel is referred to as the crew.
