Additional acquisitions for Turkish watchkeeping officers to be employed onboard cruise ships

Cruise industry experienced a remarkable growth in tourism industry over the past decades. Especially in recent years, interest of consumers in tourism sector shifted to cruising around the world which offers different activities and mobility. Number of cruise passengers which is around 18 million in 2009, reached 28 million in 2018 with an increase of 55 percent in 9 years. To meet this increasing demand, cruise ship fleet has also been growing and will continue to grow in the future according to number of new ship orders. However, Turkey cannot get enough share from cruise industry. Similar to share in industry, Turkey is not successful by means of number of watchkeeping officers working on cruise ships. Training and education of seafarers is standardized by IMO with STCW Convention. Hence, countries ratified the STCW Convention must follow the regulations of STCW and maritime education and training programs must be in compliance with STCW. Also certification standards are defined in STCW for each rank of seafarer. Besides the standard training regardless the ship type a seafarer work on, IMO set a new set of standards for personnel working on passenger ships because of their different operations than cargo ships. Number of people on cruise ships other than officers are significantly greater when compared to cargo ships and this requires more knowledge and skills for those officers especially on crowd management and crisis management main titles. It is seen that maritime education and training system in Turkey is in compliance with STCW standards and Turkey is a considerable country by means of number of officers provided. Furthermore, number of active officers in Turkey is continuing to increase each year. However, in contrary with increasing number, it is apparent that Turkish watchkeeping officers have difficulty in working on cruise ships according to literature and statistics. In this thesis, after reviewing the literature, both international and national regulations and legislations are examined to investigate the compliance and differences of maritime training and education system in Turkey with global standards. A questionnaire was conducted for cruise lines to gather information about the requirements of the industry. In this study, the reasons why Turkish watchkeeping officers cannot work on cruise ships were investigated and the additional acquisitions