ABOUT US

WHAT IS THE CRUISE RETAIL ACADEMY?

We are a brand new free professional network for cruise retailers providing you access to training, news, blogs, jobs, networking and much more. We welcome onboard cruise retail professionals from across all operators, all positions, and all experience levels (new and existing).

Our aim is to build a network from scratch that is active, positive, growing and dynamic.

Cruise Retail Academy is not only a training platform, it will be also a great way to connect the sector together. You will join over 2000+ members from across the oceans.

Join for free

OUR VISION

Let's start with a question...

Q: What is the single most important element of cruise retail?

The answer....

A: Skilled & Motivated People

This simple conclusion is why we created a new professional network specifically to achieve our vision...

To find, support and mentor the best talent in our industry.

Cruise Retail Academy has been launched to partner with you as a retail professional, as a retail operator or as an external brand partner.

CRUISE RETAIL IS ALL ABOUT PEOPLE. AND SO ARE WE.

We will create a professional network for the amazing cruise retailers across the oceans.

OUR STORY

The inspiration for the Cruise Retail Academy started with the global pandemic of 2020 and the shutdown of the cruise industry. During this time, most onboard retail professionals faced real uncertainty, true financial hardship and forced separation from the job they loved and the teams they loved being part of.

During this dark time however, there was a source of illumination. The passion, enthusiasm and belief in a brighter future never wavered from the global family of "shoppies". They wanted to develop their leadership, their career and their skills no matter what was against them. Their true determination and hope was amazing and humbling to witness. And it planted a seed with me.

How can we nurture this spirit and support these amazing professionals to really grow to be the leaders they aspired to be? Whilst the industry has real challenges in fragmentation, consistency and connecting all professionals with opportunities, the attitude across the onboard cruise retail sector is one of the best you can see regardless of operator, real effort with sincerity across every ship across the world.

As I have been a senior global leader in the cruise retail industry for nearly 10 years, I understand these complexities and also opportunities better than nearly anyone. Therefore, I will try my best to help and guide cruise retail professionals to confidently and individually improve their skills, opportunities and experiences.

Let's sail together!

OUR VALUES

iLLUMINATING YOUR RETAIL WORLD

Our tagline and our logo is also one of our values. We are a bright light. Our business is built around positive success, therefore we will do our utmost to provide our members a continually illuminating place to be. We will ensure that content, input and our tone are optimistic and forward looking.

"SHOPPIES" CHAMPION

Cruise retail success comes from the people on the shop floor. Too often forgotten, so we want to be a strong support network for the thousands of amazing 'shoppies' (onboard professionals) working in this industry. As we passionately believe in people development, we put this as our core value and built the business from it. We believe in an approach which is built from passion, enthusiasm and dedication to our sector. Our goal is to do our best to provide you with the value that we know you need, in the right time frame, and with the right content!

TRUST IS EVERYTHING

We want you to trust us to deliver the best for you. We understand completely that cruise retail is a competitive field. We will provide you with a honest, bespoke and professional solution that is not at any dis-advantage to others in the sector. We commit to providing a trustworthy, dedicated resource and one which is as good as we can build for your needs.

PARTNERS FOR LIFE

We would love to work with a long-term partnership mentality. And therefore we will do our best to provide to you an ongoing working relationship built from mutual understanding, dedicated commitment and honest dialogue.

OUR TEAM

Adrian Pittaway

Adrian has worked in the travel retail industry nearly 20 years, and in the retail sector for 30 years. Starting on the shopfloor as a shop assistant, progressing to shop manager, area manager and progressing up to being the Global Head of Retail at MSC Group for over 8 years. Now respected as one of the leading figures in the cruise retail industry, Adrian's hands-on experience and passion for shop floor retail management is at the heart of the foundations of the Cruise Retail Academy.

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Robi Gaine

Robi has nearly 30 years of true cruise industry experience and knowledge starting from the shop floor and working his way up from being a bellboy to being head waiter, to a shop manager and up to being a fleet manager across various cruise lines around the world. His passion for managing and developing people was then further enhanced with over 12 years experience now in the recruitment sector with countless successful placements in the cruise industry.

OUR STRATEGY

Onboard Cruise Retail Professionals

We provide 2 strategies:

1) to provide you with a strong start and community connectivity to cruise retail with consistent content access to our Shoppies central news, social media and information hub.

2) We offer you the chance to join either our free Cruise Retail Academy or our good value Academy+. This is a career enhancing mentoring monthly service which will support you by providing virtual training session access, brand workshop access, leadership development, motivational speakers, exclusive blogs and working group sessions to help you connect with other professionals in our industry, so you can grow together.

Cruise Retail Operators

We provide 2 strategies:

1) To support you in finding the right senior candidates to suit the needs of your business, with a bespokely tailored "leadership in cruise retail" recruitment strategy

2) To connect your retail leaders to both the Cruise Retail Academy and Academy+. With potential brand online training workshops and academy leadership training designed to enhance their performance and ultimately improve your workforce, with the partnership of our brand partners.

Brands & Suppliers

We provide 2 strategies:

1) To provide you with a consultation, a cruise retail readiness audit and create a bespoke strategy to give you the feedback and expertise, so you can understand the potential of your brand to match with the requirements of the cruise retail channel.

2) To provide your brand with a dedicated ongoing online workshop. Connect directly with interested cruise retail professionals to enhance who can be accredited to your brand standard. The Brand Academy will provide you a perfect platform to connect your brand consistently and simply to the best talent.

OUR LOGOS

Our logos for Cruise Retail Academy and for #Shoppies are both a tribute to our tagline 'illuminate your retail world'.

The inspiration came from the lightbulb, the source of inspiration and ideas. From there we connected the logo the the idea of facets and angles. The triangles represent the trinity of our industry, the individual, the brand and the operators working together to create success. The colours of green and blue represent the values of success and the ocean. And bringing it all together is the globe representing the fact that we are here to support cruise professionals from around the world. The logo is dynamic, you will see it used in different ways and methods across different media which represent how changing and evolving cruise retailing really is.