How Much Free Time do you Get on a Cruise Job?

Although people are often enthusiastic about getting their first cruise job, they always have lots of questions that they want answering.

One of the most common questions that people ask, aside from how much they will get paid, is how much time off they will be entitled to when they're on board.

Unfortunately, the answer is not as straight forward. People are obviously going to ask the question, because if they are traveling to some of the most beautiful places in the world, one thing that they will want to do is get to spend some time in the destinations.

It would be frustrating to be next to all these wonderful places but not be able to visit them, and not having time off could become very disappointing.

The easy answer is that you will always get time off when you're on a cruise job. At each stop you will most likely get some free time to go and spend on whatever you want to see and do. The real question of how much free time you will get, however, depends on different factors.

One of these is the length of time your ship stays in port. Different ships spend different amounts of time in port, ranging from a few hours to a whole day. The longer you stay in port, it goes without saying that you will get more time off to do what you want.

Another factor is the amount of days you spend in port. When you are out at sea, these are known in the industry as 'sea days'. Quite simply, the less 'sea days' you have, the more time off you are likely to get. Occasionally the ship you're on will have just one or two sea days each week, but other times there may be more.

The important point to note is that just because you get less time to go and visit each port, you will still have time to enjoy yourself. But if you have a choice, go for the cruises with the least number of 'sea days'.

And the final thing that you have to consider concerning free time with a cruise job is what department you will be working in. If you are working as 'crew', the chances are that you will get less time off than if you are working in a 'staff' position.

Crew are responsible for certain jobs even when in port, so you will certainly find yourself having less free time available in this situation. But, you will still get time off so don't be too concerned about that.

If you are working in the entertainment sector of the ship then you will probably not have to work when in port because most of the entertainment takes place when the ship has left port.

So it's always worth finding out exactly what position you want to do when applying for a cruise job as this will almost certainly affect the amount of free time that you have.