High demand for cruise sales agents and reservation staff has been addressed with the announcement last Friday at Cruise360 of a new traineeship program, under a joint collaboration between Cruise Lines International Association Australasia (CLIA), Apprenticeship Support Australia (ASA) and training provider, TAFE NSW.

The outgoing global head of the Cruise Line Industry Association (CLIA), Cindy D’Aoust, was in Australia last week for the annual Cruise360 conference held at the Hyatt Regency Sydney. D’Aoust has been with CLIA for the past four years, three of which as President and CEO, based in Washington DC where she lobbies with the US government over pressing cruise issues.

“The warning bells are ringing ever louder. We talk about it every year, but now for the first time we are able to see the impact of it. We’ve been warning this for years,” Odell told CLIA members in Sydney.

“We can see the number of new ships that are being built and the percentage that won’t fit under the bridge, combined with the age of the existing fleet. It’s inevitable that bigger and bigger ships are going to be coming down to this part of the world. That’s not to say that there isn’t space for the small ships. As we said, expedition is growing exponentially as well, and there is definitely room for the smaller ships. But we need to be able to accommodate the bigger ships, because that’s where the volume is.”

Cruise destinations presenting include Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Monaco, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand and New York as well as local tourism bodies: Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

“As cruise continues to grow in popularity, more cruise lines will base more ships down under and the number of homeports and itineraries will only grow,” says CLIA Australasia Managing Director, Joel Katz.