With New Ships Coming, Carnival Hires Thousands
In an announcement Tuesday, cruise line conglomerate Carnival highlighted some of the thousands of crew positions it is seeking to fill as it brings ever more newbuilds into its fleet – welcome news to mariners as other sectors of the industry contract.
With the Koningsdam, Carnival Vista, Seabourn Encore and AIDAprima starting operations this year, Carnival's many subsidiaries need hotel-side staff by the hundreds, plus licensed and unlicensed crew from wipers up to unlimited masters. For the Vista alone, Carnival expects to fill 1,400 positions, including an operator for its ropes course and aerial cycling amenities, a manager for its multi-sensory theater and 100 musicians and entertainers. At the upper end of the cruise market, the Seabourn Encore requires an embarked tailor.
And Carnival isn't the only one with crew berths available. In all, seven cruise ships will be delivered in 2016, including the Royal Carribean megaships Ovation of the Seas and Harmony of the Seas. The latter is set to take the title of world's largest with 5,500 passengers. Harmony makes use of its 230,000 gt size to incorporate unusual theme park features, including a ten-story spiral water slide at the stern.
Separately, on Carnival's P&O Line-owned Oceana, built in 2000, U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) inspectors found sufficient cause to fail the vessel for inadequate sanitation, giving her facilities a rating of 82 out of 100, three points short of the required threshold.
In an inspection dated March 1, the CDC found soiled tile grout, food scraps and insect remains in a food preparation area, an unclean ice machine, out of service refrigerators and insufficiently chlorinated pools.
As of Tuesday the CDC had not posted a proposed remedial plan from P&O. The CDC lists an average of four failed sanitary inspections per year over the past two decades; the March 1 result is the only failed inspection for a P&O vessel within the scope of the CDC's published records.