After difficult three years since the start of the pandemic and the amazing return back to cruising in 2022, the cruise lines have many reasons to celebrate this holiday season. 

Counting down the last days of 2022, Celebrity Cruises is celebrating a conclusion of an exceptional and very successful year together with its crew. As it draws to a close, the cruise line wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on the year and share what is ahead to in 2023 in its latest edition of the Crew Newsletter "The World, at Your Service”.

The following article is a guest post from Mladen Jakovljevic - former crew member and author of the book "Modern Age Slavery"

Norwegian Cruise Lines is undertaking changes related to staff benefits on board its cruise ships that will be affecting greatly on decision making moving forward to many staff, the company and guests in retrospect. The recent changes will affect most staff members and officers who carry less than 2 stripes on their uniform, while some reduction of benefits will affect all staff across the board.

The following article is a guest post from Mladen Jakovljevic - former crew member and author of the book "Modern Age Slavery"

Crew Center received the following letter from a Ukrainian crew member asking the community to spread the word an help Ukrainian seafarers.

Several crew members working aboard Costa Cruises ships voiced their disappointment about the promotion opportunities in the company and the lack of transparency about the policy of future advancement. A crew member said that after joining Costa Cruises, seven years ago, as a Snack Steward his ambition to become a waiter was partially realized despite all his efforts to achieve his goal.

As the health situation related to COVID-19 continues to improve across the world, most cruise lines have started to relax the mask policy for the crew. Crew Center has talked to crew members working on several major cruise lines to find out what are the latest crew mask policies. Surprisingly most of them said that masks are now optional and not a requirement in all crew and guest areas.

Silversea’s crew members have presented concerns to Crew Center related to the despair between pay for the same positions. Silversea is a company which operates under Royal Caribbean Group, as a company has a long-standing consideration and business model that incorporates its crew members as they do generally understand the great importance of well trained, consistent, loyal and hardworking crew. And while Silversea does operate under RCCL, their policies can differ.

By: Mathieu Burnel