When I call Edwina Lonsdale to chat about the Cruise Career Springboard, she’s in the middle of watering her plants.

The gardening metaphor is an apt one, given that through the programme she has created, she’s cultivating young minds and helping young people to bloom. 

“It’s so heart-warming to see,” she tells me. “You start off with a group of silent 17-year-olds. In fact, my teacher friend warned me before I started, telling me: ‘It’s the worst age!’ But they really come out of themselves as they get to know you.”

Now in its third year, Cruise Career Springboard works with three colleges – St John Bosco College in Battersea; Itchen College in Southampton; and North East Surrey College of Technology (Nescot).

Opening young minds

Twelve students from each college have just finished participating in a nine-week-course, which aims to introduce students to the wide range of shore-based opportunities available in the cruise industry.

“The programme is a combination of ship visits and cruise line office visits,” explains Edwina. “Most lines can only accommodate one college at a time so it’s a juggle sorting the programmes, but we try for a combination of a big multi-brand, mainstream company such as Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Group or Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings with something completely the opposite, a tiny river cruise or an expedition line.”

“We want the students to grasp just how much variety there is in the cruise industry. They tend to think, oh that’s a travel job and they lump it all together. But when they come somewhere like Royal and they find out you can work in HR, IT, marking, sales, finance or even booking the entertainment. It just brings the whole industry alive.”

Role models

She gives the cruise lines a steer on what activities go down well with the students, such as quizzes and workshops. Most of all, they love the personal stories, she says. “They want to hear from people who are at the top of their game now about what they thought they were going to do when they were 17,” she says. “For example, Chris Townson, managing director at Uniworld was a YTS at Pickfords Travel and that’s fascinating to them.”

“I’ve been in the industry 40 years and I find out things I never knew from these office visits!”

Although the cruise lines approach their sessions with the students very differently, Edwina notes there’s a consistency of message – that the students need to build their network and grab opportunities when they arise.  

She also acknowledges how important it is to get this generation into offices, so they can appreciate the mutual support, the friendliness and the fun of an office environment and understand the value in cross-department collaboration.

The scheme has gathered a lot of momentum in the three years since Edwina launched it with her husband, Matthew.

It was originally called The Compass Project when they set it up in 2023 with St John Bosco College, where Matthew’s cousin is a governor. “We had actually started talking about taking on a single student for work experience but then Covid came, which gave us the opportunity to think, that we should be doing something quite a bit bigger than that.”

The Lonsdales presented the idea to Jo Ryzmowska, while she was heading up Celebrity Cruises in the UK, who urged them to get more cruise lines involved.

The timing was fortuitous from Edwina’s point of view. Although she’s the co-owner and managing director of Mundy Cruising, she’s worked hard to make the business one of the country’s leading cruise-only retailers, with a focus on luxury, and she’s now able to lean on the team she’s employed.

“I now have someone who looks after Mundy Cruising so beautifully, that I do have the spare time to do it. And I’ve been around for a long time and I know everybody.”

Support throughout the ranks

Thanks to Edwina’s network and the collaborative spirit of the cruise industry, her idea worked: “Everyone’s bought into it and everybody offers their support.”

Such is the support that Gerard Nolan, Royal Caribbean’s vice-president and managing director, EMEA, has been known to drop by for a chat with the students.

“This programme has no impact on these directors’ day jobs, it’s not commercially viable,” she says. “But for this generation, to get that attention from someone like Gerard is huge and they’re quite taken by that.”

“I was just telling one of the groups this morning, do you know how many people you’ve met over the last two months and who have shown their support to you? It’s more than 100 people.”

Future goals

Although the rebrand of the programme, into the Cruise Career Springboard, implies that the end goal is motivating these students to apply for jobs in the industry, it’s a little early in the trajectory for Edwina to share employment success stories. She does, however, reveal that a bunch of this year’s college leavers [from last year’s cohort] have reached out to her and she’s helping them get the guidance they need. 

The programme will continue to evolve and expand, she says, perhaps regionally, definitely with a stronger focus on the pathway to jobs, she says, helped by the likes of Royal Caribbean introducing an in-house apprentice scheme. 

As for Edwina, she’s fully committed to this pioneering role, spreading the word, telling people, this is the industry you need to be in: “I want young people to know there’s a part of the industry that is absolutely cutting edge, it’s technologically advanced, it’s creative, it’s innovative – and you can be a part of it.”

“I think it’s very common now for the media to dismiss this generation as a load of snowflakes. They don’t know how to work. They can’t focus and they’re not prepared to come into the office. None of that is true. And the cruise industry needs new people coming through all the time, we need the creativity, the agility, [the people who can] embrace AI without being frightened of it.”

“It’s just great fun,” she says about her mission. “Very rewarding and very inspiring. It’s rewarding for everyone involved.”

We end the call and she returns to tending her plants. But the Springboard programme will never be far from her mind. Her enthusiasm for her students is infectious, and she’s sowing positive seeds in their young minds – and surely, she’s helping a beautiful new generation of cruise industry employees to bloom in the years to come.