World Class Shipboard Hospitality

Abstract

This text provides a comprehensive overview on how modern cruise ships are run, covering the most important topics of today’s shipboard operation involving Deck, Engine and Hotel divisions, with a focus on the recent innovations in the Culinary Arts, Entertainment productions, Spa and Beauty facilities and a specific reference on how to maximize "onboard revenues" such as Casino, Bar, Duty-Free Shops, Shore Tours, Photo Gallery, and onboard Art Auctions. A special chapter is dedicated to the procedures to prevent virus outbreaks including Norovirus and Coronavirus.

World Class Shipboard Hospitality is addressed to all those who want to get an unbiased understanding of today’s cruise industry such as worldwide media professionals, tourism and hospitality college teachers, cruise industry administrators, product and service suppliers, crew manning agencies and business executives. It can also be a guide for marine, tourism, and hospitality students to learn from a reliable source, and a tool to encourage candidates interested in a career in the industry, as well as to assist existing cruise employees to be eligible for a promotion.

Today there are several books about cruising and cruise ships with description and evaluation of ships, cruise mystery, fiction stories, and personal memories; however, World Class Shipboard Hospitality has the advantage to describe the cruise business operation with first-hand knowledge from an inside point of view and with a richness of professional information, that makes it unique in its genre.

REVIEWS and WORDS OF PRAISE

See review in Italian industry media Formazione Turismo, Hospitality Management, February 2023

See review in Seatrade Cruise News, Hospitality expert Paolo Benassi's new book delves into cruise operations by Anne Kalosh (Dec 20, 2022)

A culmination of decades worth of experience and dedication to the cruise industry. A must-read for all cruising enthusiasts and industry staff!
--Cornelis van der Hel, former Princess Cruises’ Passenger Services General Manager

This extremely timely and totally comprehensive narrative details everything needed to provide safe and successful cruises throughout the world. The number one critical resource for everyone in the entire cruise industry.
---Jeri Trannett DeTillio, Journalist and Coach

Thanks to his remarkable experience in the cruise sector, Benassi gives us a valuable and complete professional training manual, a useful guide also for hotel school's students interested to start a career on a cruise ship.
--Damiano Oberoffer, Head Professor at Macugnaga Monterosa School

They are floating hotels with luxury restaurants and high-level entertainment, but they need to be perfect to accomplish their mission: to give people a break from reality in the most amazing surroundings.... Benassi has spent almost his entire adult life in the hospitality industry, whether on the ground or at sea. His book considers the main aspects of shipboard hospitality, its evolution, the highs, and lows encountered recently during the pandemic, and primarily the human aspect of it all. It is a book crafted with attention, passion, and, above all, love. "World Class Shipboard Hospitality" is a must-read for anyone who works in the industry, who dreams of working at sea, or for those who, simply, dream of escaping in the lap of luxury if only for a few days.
---Dr. Antonino Laspina, Director Italian Trade Commission

The wealth of knowledge this will provide not only to seasoned professionals in the industry but to those wanting to pursue a career in the maritime business is imposing.
--Keith Woods, Corporate Account Manager at Ecolab Inc.

Covering the full shipborne hotel organization and hotel and sanitation procedures in modern cruise ships. It is practical, easy to read, extended to all aspects of guest satisfaction and sanitation, and contains daily life cases illustrating the theory. A must for any medium and high-level cruise line executives and senior onboard staff.
--Andres Molina Marti, Cruise ship's design and operation consultant and former C.O.O. in Pullmantur Cruises (RCCL Group)

Paolo Benassi gives a fascinating cross-sectional overview of a cruise ship and its complex meritocratic hierarchy. He offers interesting anecdotes and practical advice to guide the ship industry to the other side of the COVID-19 storm, with the experience of a well navigated seaman and the style of a professional coach.
--Dr. Ilaria Serra, Professor of Italian and Comparative Studies, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida

This book charts who we are and what we do as a business. As we gradually emerge from the global COVID pandemic, we can use it profitably both as a learning tool and support engagement with future crews.
--Andrea Cavallucci, Shipboard Finance Process Lead, MSC Cruises

About the Author

Paolo Benassi began his shipboard hospitality career in Italy at the age of 21 and worked his way up to hotel director. Later he joined Costa Cruises as Vice President of Hotel Operations and was sent to Florida to oversee the launching of the "Costa Riviera" and the "Cruising Italian Style" marketing concept in the U.S. market. Benassi decided to remain in Florida with his wife and two children when Costa was purchased by Carnival Cruises and moved its operation division back to Genoa. He is now with the Maritime Holdings Group where he managed, among other cruise ships, the hospitality services of two fascinating sea-going programs "The Scholar Ship" and "The Peace Boat" and created a Shipboard Management Hospitality Training Program certified by the University of California, Riverside, while serving as an adjunct professor in "Food Management" at Johnson & Wales South Florida campus and "Hospitality & Tourism" at Florida Atlantic University.