Can You Work on a Cruise Ship as a Couple?

Can You Work on a Cruise Ship as a Couple?

There are a million questions I get asked about life onboard a cruise ship. Among the questions I get asked most though is about working onboard as part of a couple. Can you work on a cruise ship as a couple? Yes – well, sometimes, if everything works out just right, and then maybe not all of the time.

As always all opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my company.

Couples Working Onboard Together is Often Encouraged

For the most part couples working onboard together is encouraged by the cruise line. This is because happy crew members will likely be more loyal to a cruise line and stay with them longer. I can say from personal experience there is truth to this – the cruise line I work for is currently doing really well at working with my husband and I to line our contracts up and it is a huge reason why we have stayed with them.

A bonus for the cruise line? It can also save the cruise line cabin space. For example – my husband and I are both entitled to single cabins based on our jobs onboard. However, when we sail together my cabin (we stay in his as it is a bit nicer) is available for the ship to use for contractors that come onboard, officers onboard for handovers or trainings, etc. In this case it ends up being a win-win for the cruise line. Happy crew + extra cabin space.

It’s also great for the crew member as they are getting to spend that time together, they have that emotional support right onboard, and they aren’t having to navigate how to be in touch with their significant other at home. Staying in touch has gotten easier for crew, but with time zones and sometimes spotty ship internet, having your partner right there to talk through the challenges of life with is a huge emotional benefit. Another huge benefit is that you get to go on dates in some really incredible places.

Couples getting to work together onboard does not always happen, though. There is a lot of coordination involved and often some amount of sacrifice, some of it is down to timing, and a lot of it is dependent on which job you have onboard. I’ll explain.

It’s like that scene in a movie where one person goes, “I just got offered a promotion for my dream job, but it’s 3,000 miles away” except you have to have the conversation about what that means for your personal and professional lives multiple times per year.

Why What Job You Have Onboard Matters with Whether or Not You Can Work on a Cruise Ship as a Couple

Part 1 – Interdepartmental Favoritism:

Can you work on a cruise ship as a couple? One aspect of whether or not you can work together onboard is what your function is in relation to your partners function. Most companies try to avoid having a couple where one partner is the direct supervisor to the other. It’s a major conflict of interest, can lead to a lot of feelings of favoritism amongst co-workers and can make some potential HR headaches. This doesn’t mean it never happens; but, in the instances that it does there will likely have to be some modifications made to those positions appraisal and discipline structure onboard. Or, one partner may need to switch to another position onboard to avoid that potential conflict.

Part 2 – The Position Has Already Been Filled:

Are there multiple people in your function onboard or is there only one person on the ship that does your job? If there is only one of your function onboard it may be harder to line up your contracts. This is part of why planning ahead can be so important when it comes to lining your contracts up. If you know you want to sail with your significant other and either one or both of you are the only ones onboard with your function, the earlier you request it the better. Otherwise someone else might get assigned the ship that your partner is assigned to and then that gets a whole lot more complicated.

Getting Contracts Lined Up

Being on the same ship is wonderful. It happens plenty of times that couples end up on different ships, that’s because getting your contracts lined up can be quite the challenge.

The Same Ship is One Part of the Challenge

Getting your contracts to be on the same ship is one piece of the puzzle. This is made more challenging when there are multiple departments involved and more so still if there is only one of your position onboard the ship. Planning in advance – sometimes far in advance – is usually the only way. Most often one person gets their contract lined up and then the other person requests with their head office planner to be on the same ship.

For this reason, it might be easier to work for a smaller cruise line to get your contracts to line up. If there are only 4 ships in your companies fleet there is a much better chance of getting assigned to the same ship versus if there are 20 ships in the fleet. That doesn’t mean you need to go out and change cruise lines – but it could be something to consider if you are having a hard time getting your contracts lined up.

Part 3 – Why What Position You Have Matters – Your Position Isn’t On That Ship:

An extra challenge is that not all positions are on every ship within the company’s fleet. It might be a certain show is on a certain ship, maybe a newer ship requires different types of engineers for a new system, or maybe there is a specialty wine venue on one ship but not another, or an ice skating rink – the list is nearly endless. There’s a million variations on different ships within the same fleet requiring different personnel. If one partner gets assigned to a ship that the other partners function isn’t on it could mean spending a contract apart, or maybe the other partner tries to change jobs. Compromise is a big part of being able to work on a cruise ship in a couple.

The Same Length Contract is Another Challenge:

Even if you can get it so you will be on the same ship doesn’t mean your contract lengths will be the same. There are some positions onboard that are on a 3 months on, 3 months off rotation (usually higher ranking deck and engine officers), then there are some that are 4 months on 2 months off, or 6 on, 2 off, and then there are those that are 8 or 9 months on with a few months off. Asking the company to shift someone that is meant to be 8 months on to only 3 months is going to be a big ask – and one you likely won’t get especially depending on what role they have onboard.

Let’s say you are a singer or dancer, part of a cast that is scheduled to be onboard for 6 months. It’s the same singers and dancers that have rehearsed together to prepare the show. Yes, there are times that someone will get sick or injured or have an emergency at home they have to leave for, but aside from the exceptions, it’s meant to be those same people together for the entire contract.

If that singer or dancer is trying to line up their contracts with someone doing three months on three months off – they might get the same ship, but the only way to get their contracts to line up in length is to have the person doing three months on three months off literally double the length of their contract. And, to be honest, this likely wouldn’t work because it would mess up the rotation with that officers counterpart. Maybe they could make it work for one contract, but there are just some combinations of positions onboard that even if you can get on the same ship at the same time, the contract lengths will most likely not match up, certainly not exactly, and most likely not really at all.

That’s not to say it can’t be done. There are some positions with a bit more flexibility. So do not give up hope!

Why Your Job Onboard Matters – Part 4 – some jobs have no flexibility in contracts and contract lengths:

Like in the example above with the singers and dancers – there are some jobs onboard that will have more flexibility in their contract lengths or that are more likely to work with you. There are also some jobs that are the opposite of that. Jobs that are hired from outside companies are typically known to be less flexible – commonly the spa and shops but also other departments like the art gallery. The contract lengths for these positions tends to be on the longer side (6-9 months) – without much flexibility for shorter contracts. So, if you are trying to line up with someone on a shorter contract you will likely run into some struggles.

Lining Up Contracts Often Takes Compromise

Let’s keep going with this singer/dancer scenario. How bad do you want to sail with your significant other that is doing three months on, three months off contracts? Same goes in reverse, let’s assume that three months on, three months off situation is a deck officer. Is the singer/dancer willing to change jobs to be able to line up their contracts with their significant other? Is the deck officer maybe willing to take a demotion and go down a rank where they might have the option of doing longer contracts? What compromise/sacrifice are they willing to make to line those contracts up?

Sometimes it’s not “can you work on a cruise ship as a couple?” but, how much are you willing to sacrifice of your career to be able to work on the same ship as your partner.

Or, maybe the deck officer can do a longer contract in their current position – but then they have to bounce between ships. Bouncing between ships can sometimes slow down the potential for promotion as with each new ship you’ve got to somewhat prove yourself all over again to a new set of supervisors. Is it worth slowing down your promotion potential to get a longer contract to be able to spend more time onboard with your partner? Only the people living it can know what is right for them.

For me the compromise was not taking a promotion to be able to sail with him, which then put him in line for his promotion. While it helped my relationship I’m quite confident I can say that it hurt my whole career trajectory. But, we got to sail on the same ship with nearly the same contract lengths – and he got his promotion. For us, long term, his career advancement is more important financially. Getting to work together onboard is often built on compromises.

Want to Sail Together As a Couple? The Compromise Might Be Where You Get to Travel

The compromise might be which ship you go to – the company could say, “we can get you both on this ship, for pretty much the same length of time”. At first you go, “great!”, and then realize it’s doing an itinerary you’ve done a million times while your friends are all happily exploring Europe, or Australia, or doing a World Cruise. Sometimes the compromise isn’t a career compromise but rather one of where in the world you get to explore. For a lot of people the travel is why they started working on cruise ships, take out the travel and is the job really worth it? Being assigned to seemingly less fun contracts could be because it was easiest for the company to get crew on those ships to adjust their contracts to accommodate your request, or it could be because that was the last ship they were going to assign as everyone wanted to be in Europe instead of in Alaska. (I’ll be spending the summer in Alaska this year and am quite excited about it, but yeah, it’s not Europe).

Do You Have to Be Married To Work On a Cruise Ship as a Couple?

While I can’t unequivocally say “no” to this for all cruise lines, in my experience you do not need to be married to request to work together onboard, get a contract together, and live together onboard. Cruise lines are used to couples meeting and working together onboard for awhile before getting married – if they ever get married. Certainly not a requirement. Maybe there is one cruise line out there that won’t let unmarried couples request a contract together or live together, I doubt it to be honest.

I will say, as passengers like to know what’s going on in the lives of crew members, if they find out you’re onboard together and unmarried they may very well ask if you’re allowed to live together onboard. In this case most of the time I would politely decline to answer – depending on their views the conversation could go south quite quickly.

Sometimes It Just Doesn’t Work Out – Either Sailing Together or the Relationship

When preparing to write this post I reached out to my friends to see what their experiences had been. I got a lot of responses ranging from whole hearted “it’s possible, it’s great!” to some damn near depressing responses. An overwhelming response I got was that, while they were able to line up their contracts to work together onboard once, or maybe twice, lining it up consistently was not happening. This caused either one person in the couple to stop working at sea or for the relationship to end. Most often, from those that I heard from or spoke with, it was that one person stopped working onboard. They either found work on land or opted to sail as Friend/Spouse-On-Board (I’ve been there!)

Most of the time when they weren’t able to get their contracts to line up together it was because of contract lengths not lining up. Choosing not to work onboard a different ship is a different type of compromise all together. But, sometimes when the option is to be at home around family it can outweigh being at sea on a different ship than your partner (been there, too).

Can Couples Working on a Cruise Ship Together Share a Cabin?

Yes…sometimes. This can depend on what job you have onboard. What rank a crew member has on a cruise ship will usually determine what type of cabin that crew member is able to have. If one of the people in the couple has a cabin to themselves, the answer to this will be yes. If you are both in a position that shares a cabin, it might not be that simple. It all depends on who else is onboard, and how the rest of the cabin assignments within your department work out. If there are multiple couples onboard it will work out easier, but it’s certainly not a guarantee.

There are some cruise lines that have “couples” cabins onboard for those couples sailing together. This is not always the case and certainly not the industry norm – but, they do exist on some cruise lines.

Also, remember cruise ship cabins are not huge – even the bigger of the crew cabins aren’t that awful big. Be prepared to get to know your significant other in a whole new way living with them in a small room (and even smaller bathroom) for months.

It can also be hard if your schedules are quite different – one contract my husband was on the overnight shift and had to sleep all afternoon – which was challenging when my biggest break of the day was from 4:00pm – 7:00pm. If I was in the cabin I had to be super quiet for him to sleep (luckily he’s a pretty heavy sleeper!) Wouldn’t trade it for anything, but there are absolutely some challenges to living with your partner on a cruise ship.

Once You Can Sail Together, It’s Great, Right?

I wish I could say that once you line your contracts up together it’s all roses. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Because cruise ships work on a contract by contract basis – just because you get it lined up for one contract doesn’t mean you will be able to for the next contract. So, the challenge of having your contracts line up will come up usually twice a year. Once the company knows you’re a couple and want to sail together they might try to line your contracts up early, giving you priority for some contracts, but it’s still something you’ve got to work through over and over again.

---

It’s complicated and not simple though – as one friend put it – you may be in a long term relationship that is going through a rough patch. You don’t know how it will go, if you will make it or not, but you’re still working to line up your contracts because – well, what if it is rough patch and you work through things and it gets better? You don’t want to be on different ships if it all works out. So you work to line up your contracts even if you have no idea if the relationship will work out.

Sailing together is great, and can be great. It can be a tough path to make happen though, especially when you have to make it happen over and over and over again.

Want to know more about the good, the bad, and the ugly of living together on a cruise ship? Take a look at this post:

Are You A Cruise Ship Couple? How Did You Make It Work? Or Did You?