UK-based P&O Cruises has had to scrub seven cruises scheduled for one of its ships after being forced to redeploy its crew to meet manpower shortages on other vessels.
The Carnival Corp subsidiary said over the weekend that it was delaying the return to service of the recently reactivated 84,300-gt cruise ship Arcadia (built 2006) until 5 July due to “crew availability issues”.
“The impact of Covid upon airlines and general disruption has necessitated the cancellations as we need to move crew from Arcadia to other ships in the fleet,” the company said.
P&O Cruises did not disclose the types of seafarers it is struggling to bring on board — cruise ship crews are divided into deck, technical and hotel departments — but it highlights a problem for the revival of the cruise sector following a two-year shut down that left most its employees unemployed.
A senior executive at a Manila-based manning agency that supplies crew to the cruise industry said the sudden big demand cruise crews as ships are being reactivated for the summer season has created a tight labour market.
Speaking on the condition of anonyminity as she was not authorised to talk to the media, the manning agency representative said that many of the seaferers who had been laid off when the cruise sector shut down have “moved on with their lives”.
Deck and engine crew members, she said, have moved to other types of ships, while hotel department seafarers have found alternative employment ashore and are reluctant to return.
While qualified deck and engine staff are hard to find, she said that there is no shortage of willing new candidates for hotel department positions.
However, this has led to a bottlenecks at institutions in the Philippines that provide International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW) training and certification, which is required by all seafarers no matter what their position on board.
Cruise industry sources said the war in Ukraine has exacerbated the situation as Russia and Ukraine were also important source markets for cruise crews but are now almost impossible to recruit seafarers from.
This is putting further pressure on other crewing source markets in Eastern Europe and Asia, where like in the Philippines, experienced seafarers have moved on to other types of ships or left the industry altogether.
P&O Cruises is not affiliated in any way with the DP World-owned P&O Ferries, which recently laid off hundreds of UK seafarers in an effort to replace them with cheaper contract workers.
