What is a cruise ship shore excursion staff job like? — featuring Cruise Along With Trent

0:00 thank you hello Cruisers Tren here and today I welcome you to cruise along with me first off question on everyone's mind no I'm not wearing a wrinkled shirt this is linen it's meant to look like this it's meant to look cool next let me tell you what this video is going to be about

0:17 when I first got hired for Shore Excursion or as I would say sure X I had no idea what my day-to-day life would be looking like I had no idea what I would actually be doing they really did not tell me I just kind of got this job so uh I looked up on YouTube I looked for articles I couldn't find anything

0:38 so I want to answer some of those questions for all of you about what I actually do what my life looks like and what my job actually is and then after this I'm hoping to turn this into a video series where I talk to people in certain departments and interview them and actually find out

0:52 what their job is like not interview them based off how they feel about cruise ship life because that's a different video series as you know I'll link that below but purely interview them and just see what their role is and what they actually do so let me tell you usually and this differs for every

1:11 different Cruise Company but overall The Bare Bones is the same the muscles is the same I wake up at around 6 45 and I head to um the shore Excursion desk which is located right next to guest relations usually and we have our first like a 15-minute meeting of the day we find out if

1:29 there's any tours that need to be sold things like that this position is mainly a sales position your job is to work with the guest find out what their interests are and sell them excursions based off their needs or what we uh what we need to sell and that's what you're doing so for most

1:51 days from seven o'clock until 11 I'm talking with guests dealing with some complaints if maybe we're sold out of something or they had a bad experience on another Excursion but other than that I'm just selling selling selling until 11. after that I get a nice like five six hour break until 4 45 we have another 15

2:12 minute meeting and then we sell sell sell until 8 8 30 depending on the day and that's what you're doing mainly in this department you're selling you're talking to the guests learning what they want what their needs are and really help even get that but what's cool is to help us understand what we're selling we

2:32 actually get to go on the excursions I've been on a lot of them free of charge so if you ever have any free time off and there's a free slot usually if you're in this position you're able to go on that uh that tour which is amazing but as the week goes on there's tends to be lots of

2:52 lots of free time so every person has their own task throughout the week sometimes it's stuffing uh tickets that people purchased before the cruise and envelopes get ready for the next Voyage which literally there's like 4 000 tickets so you're going through each room number and stuffing them with the

3:08 tickets that they pre-purchased it's working on a duplicate report where if they purchase two tours that are very very similar you send them out a letter to let them know hey you have these you should want to cancel or do you want to keep them doing a uh writing up a report based off

3:24 how soon the tours leave so if they're doing two in one day you are alerting them of that information and letting them know that if they do happen to miss the second tour it's on them because we're warning them right now and that's about it sometimes in the morning though you work

3:41 um you go to the theater or some other location where groups gather to go on their tours because there's a thousands of people going on tours every day we don't want everyone going outside at once and making the buses late making them inefficient asking questions so we have them wait in the theater and we

3:59 have someone outside letting us know when their buses arrive when we should send out the guests and stuff like that so we're just on the theater and a microphone I'm usually telling jokes telling them about my life stuff like that and then let's say they're going on a hike hike group a I will now walk you

4:14 outside I walk the group outside and then that's it if you're in that designated location you're usually not at the desk for about an hour hour and a half in the morning but then you go right back to the desk and you continue selling and doing your thing now let's say uh let's say you're that person outside I

4:35 mentioned that position is called add that's all day Duty you're usually that once or twice every week and what that means is once the ship arrives at Port you go outside you work with the tour operators to make sure that the guests are getting to where they need to go you're partnering with them finding out

4:55 if there's a more available seats that you could sell and finding out if someone does want to go on a tour if you can possibly squeeze them in so you know just a lot of busy work but what's really nice about add is once everyone returns or if you're on a port for more than two days once all the

5:12 tours leave you're done for the day you just have to go back to the office and empty um enter all the numbers and fill out the reports and what those reports usually are is you have all the tour operators signed saying yes we agree that this many people went on this tour and then you enter those numbers into

5:29 our system print out the main report and you give it to your boss it's a pretty easy role and it's a really enjoyable role because it allows you to really experience each port to the fullest because when the when your desk is not open you're 100 free to do what you want yes there's no

5:48 side tasks that you may have to stay a little bit extra to do and the hardest side task that all the team has to do is again stuffing those tickets that takes hours to do we usually do it over the course of three days because we're a very small team in every short certain department is a very small team so when

6:05 you have to go through each individual ticket and like find the room and put it in this envelope and then organize them by deck it takes a long time but overall I love my role it's definitely probably one of the easiest roles you can get if you're working on a ship but it's also the best role in my

6:25 opinion but we'll see what my other people at interviews say about that I think it's gonna be really exciting uh comment below though what uh what role you want me to talk about next who you want me to interview and I can see if I can connect with someone on one of those teams and

6:38 really get you some more of this knowledge I think this is gonna be a very very fun video series but if I missed anything in the comments if you have any more questions about shore excursions or just cruise ship life in general please comment below but folks thank you for cruising along with me I

6:55 hope you have an amazing day and remember this shirt wasn't wrinkled it's a linen cruise with you next time folks okay Cruisers I know I said this video is over it is not I forgot one important thing I'm getting ready for work though so I'll make this quick usually if you work in the shore Excursion department

7:14 on a cruise ship you're able to eat at the guest Buffet you're usually able to go to the guest bars you're able to go to the guest gym this position comes with perks now Cruisers I'll talk with you next time this is really finish this time yeah please subscribe to my channel it will make me feel really special