It’s no secret that the hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit industries during the Covid-19 pandemic.
With all the travel restrictions, reduced household income across the board and other challenges that came with the pandemic, thousands of jobs across the industry were lost, which only worsened SA’s sky-high unemployment rate.
Now that the National State of Disaster has been lifted, there’s some semblance of normalcy returning to the hospitality industry.
With cruise liners now able to carry at full capacity, cruise and resort hiring agency Cast-A-Way, which is a leading global recruitment agency in the hospitality industry since 1998, says it has over 2 000 job opportunities now for candidates interested in obtaining a job at sea.
I spoke with Fabiana Estrela, who’s the company’s director of global operations, about this and the state of the hospitality industry in general.
Estrela explained that the cruise liners started to set sail again slowly from May last year and, at this time, most cruise lines are sailing with 70+ percent capacity.
“All cruise lines expect to be with 100 percent of their ships sailing by December, and sailing with 100 percent guest capacity,” she said.
“This is why there is a huge demand for crew members at this time with thousands of positions open for a variety of different roles.”
Estrela also weighed in on the responsibility agencies have now that the pandemic is almost behind us in improving the state of affairs in tourism.
“Agencies are here to offer jobs,” she said. “Crew members who make it not only will be employed, but also will reinvest their earnings in the country, therefore bumping up the economy and supporting their families. This has a huge social-economical domino effect."
"When the hospitality staff returns home and eventually decide to settle in the country again, they bring the highest standards of service and experience to re-apply in the local hotels and local tourism, which will be valued by international tourism and therefore make the destination well recognised as one of great experiences, attracting more international guests long term that will move the local economy as well.”
With South Africans representing the third largest nationality employed by cruise liners and the country widely recognised for its hard working and high customer service standards in the industry, cruise liners are always seeking South Africans to fill their open vacancies.
“Cast-A-Way, being in that industry for 25 years, is the most qualified agency to provide the proper guidance and customer service to the candidates and ensure they are guided in a MLC (Maritime Labour Compliance) way.”
None of their candidates get onboard without support or not knowing what they are signing up for, she added.
“We pride ourselves for offering superior services in each country we operate in. All of our recruiters have worked onboard, so they ‘have done that, been there’ and they are committed to providing the services they did not get from other recruiters in the past. We are committed to being the best and largest sourcing agency in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and bringing great talent to our clients.”