Why cruise line?: Exploring students’ motivation to work in a cruise line company

Why cruise line?: Exploring students’ motivation to work in a cruise line company

This paper reports on the results of a study aiming to elicit students’ motivation to work in a cruise line industry. This industry has been a central workplace topic among students especially within the hotel and hospitality school program in Bali. Although the cruise line job is realized to be more demanding than the hotel or restaurant job, students’ interest to work in this industry continues to exist. The challenges a worker may face when working on board a cruise ship may be in terms of physical and mental attitude. A worker or crew is required to be physically fit and mentally positive as to cope with working situations in which more time are spent on the ocean and being away from families, friends, and relatives. This phenomenon rise the question of what motivates students to work in this industry. However, very few studies have been conducted on this topic. Among limited literature in this area, more attention has been given to the customer aspect for example, customers or passengers behavior or interactions, rather than to human resources. The importance of understanding students’ motivation helps enhancing the knowledge within the scope of cruise line industry particularly from the employee aspect. Moreover, using to the Motivation Theory of Maslow, this study is arguably important as to understand the relevance of the Maslow Theory with the cruise line operations. From the business practice perspective, the results of this study help cruise line company to satisfy the needs of their crews. Using a qualitative approach, ten respondents who were students of Diploma 3 Hotel Program of Ganesha University of Education, were interviewed. The participants were recruited using purposive sampling method. Data collected were content analyzed using three steps which are open coding, axial coding, and reflective coding. The results of the study showed five categories of motivations. They are 1) economics and standard of living improvement; 2) social status; 3) self esteem; 4) helping others; and 5) other motivations. The five types of motivation represent the motivations to satisfy the hierarchical needs proposed by Maslow. Further discussions on each category are provided. Limitation and directions for future research are discussed.