INTERNATIONAL. Cruise Retail Academy has announced a strategic partnership with frntlne, a global leader in mobile-first digital training solutions, to reshape how frontline cruise industry staff prepare for their careers at sea.
The collaboration aims to bridge the gap between recruitment and onboard readiness, offering recruits a seamless and engaging training experience before they begin work in the cruise sector.
Cruise Retail Academy, which specialises in sourcing and placing top talent for the cruise sector, said the partnership reflects its commitment to not only finding the right people but also equipping them with the skills and confidence to excel onboard.
By integrating frntlne’s bite-sized, mobile learning platform, the initiative will provide practical training for retail, hospitality and guest services roles. It aims to raise industry standards and empower individuals from the commencement of their cruise career journeys.
“This partnership sets a new benchmark for excellence in preparing cruise staff for the unique demands of life at sea,” the organisations said in a joint statement.
The partners have set out these key goals:
- Accelerate the recruitment-to-readiness journey: They aim to transform the onboarding process by empowering new hires with immediate access to essential brand training via a mobile-first, TikTok-style platform, allowing them to arrive on their first day confident and prepared.
- ‘Earn as you learn’ model: The combined platform will deliver personalised mobile-friendly training content, ensuring that crew members can earn and learn on their own terms, wherever they are in the world, leveraging frntlne’s unique model of offering a free platform with incentives for frontline workers.
- Enhance operational consistency and compliance: By standardising training, they will ensure sales staff in the cruise industry are equipped with the latest brand knowledge and service protocols, leading to a consistently exceptional guest experience. This is a direct outcome of frntlne’s science-backed methodology for knowledge retention and recall.
- Boost employee confidence and performance: The partners aim to see at least a 20%+ increase in employee confidence, as measured through training analytics, leading to higher job satisfaction and improved cross-category sales performance driving measurable results for brands.
- Expand global reach and brand partnerships: This exclusive collaboration will enable the partners to support a wider range of global brands across the onboard retail and hospitality sectors, creating more opportunities for sector-wide efficient, mobile-first training and nurturing diverse talent.
Cruise Retail Academy CEO Adrian Pittaway said: “This partnership with frntlne has been forged because we fully understand the ideal onboarding journey of new crew into the cruise industry. frntlne’s incentivised innovative Tik-Tok-style training model will deliver the best possible win-win results for a trinity of brands, operators and crew.
“The operators get motivated and confident salespersons, the brands get improved brand knowledge from the outset, and the frontline colleagues get the confidence to generate higher sales and are rewarded for their training.
“We look forward to rolling out the frntlne platform with our many partners in the cruise industry and seeing the shared success.”
frntlne CEO Michael Solomon commented: “We’re thrilled to be partnering with Adrian and the Cruise Retail Academy team to bring a new era of training to the cruise industry. At frntlne, our mission is to empower frontline teams with knowledge and confidence in a way that’s engaging, rewarding and effective from day one.
“The Cruise Retail Academy deeply understands the unique onboarding needs of crew, and together we’ll ensure brands, operators and frontline colleagues all benefit from a smarter, more motivating approach to training.
“We can’t wait to see the positive impact this collaboration will deliver across the industry.” 🛳️
