Cruising: First cruiseline to officially have “excursion hosts”.

An EH is a single straight over-40 male who goes on shore excursions with three to ten single middle-age and senior-citizen women assigned to his dining table. EHs being the next evolution of…

Once upon a time, there were single men who got to travel free on cruiseships in exchange for dancing with the single women onboard in the ballroom at night. For the cruiselines, these men solved a problem. There were FAR more single women on cruiseships than single men and thus there were not enough male dance partners to dance with. The “dance hosts” solved this problem by not dancing with the same woman twice in a night until they’ve danced with all the single women once … or at least asked them to dance once. These dance hosts being required to have two dinner jackets (a.k.a. tuxedos), be great ballroom dancers, single, at least 40 years of age (as they were meant for divorcees and widows), and willing to essentially live on the ship as a non-paying passenger. They were not employees of the cruiseline but volunteers willing to help the cruiseship a little each evening in exchange for essentially room and board.

However, cruiselines are now phasing out ballrooms. Presently, new ships are commonly built without them and old ships are converting their ballrooms into something else when they go in for a refit. As for why, it is simply that ballroom dancing is not as popular anymore. Very few people know how to ballroom dance, want to learn it during sea days, and/or are just too tired to ballroom dance after a busy day of shore excursions. Since cruiselines make money off of selling shore excursions and none off of ballroom dancing (it actually cost them money to provide a band and lost revenue from the free cabins and food given the dance hosts), there is also no financial incentive to keep the latter going. Apparently, the only cruiseline that still has dance hosts is Cunard and then only on their all-sea-days trans-Atlantic cruises, which makes sense as those voyages have no shore excursions to tire out their guests.

The problem today is there are still a lot of single women on cruiseships and too few single men. By some reports, the single women to single men ratio on cruiseships range from 6 to 10 or more women to 1 man. Thus, if there were ten single men on a ship, there could be 60 to over 100 single women also on board. And as single men will go after younger women … even men in their 50s will go after women in their 20s … the true single women over 30 to single men ratio is 6-10 to 0. This reality is depressing to say the least and a problem for cruiselines.

As for why single women like to cruise and single men don’t, it is because 1) women like traveling more than men and 2) cruising provides single women a safety bubble to visit exotic ports without fear whereas single men simply don’t fear traveling alone. For single women, traveling solo via airlines to never-before-visited vacation destinations, hiring unknown taxi drivers to transport them through unknown streets in unknown cities to never-before-stayed-at hotels, sight-seeing on never-before-traveled streets, eating at restaurants they know no one at, and going to the beach alone is scary and rightly so. Unlike men, being sexually harassed and raped are real issues for women and being weaker and smaller than men, they are also more likely to be robbed, if not robbed, raped and murdered. Now multiply this danger by how many destinations a cruiseship visits in a week. In contrast, NO ONE gets on a cruiseship that isn’t to be on that cruiseship and women know this. And if the single women take cruiseship shore excursions, the protective safety bubble of the ship also extends to those excursions. They having been selected, vetted, and approved by the cruiseline. Not run by shady unknown characters hawking their unknown adventures to who knows really where. Additionally, going on a cruiseship shore excursion guarantees the ship will almost never leave without them or if it does (which is very rare), they will be transported to the next port, put up in a hotel that night free of charge, and then be back on the ship by the next day. All while still in the cruiseline’s safety bubble, which will be greatly heighten in these rare instances. That the cruiseship shore excursions cost a “little” more than independent excursions is well worth the extra price in the eyes of most single women. Unfortunately, that safety bubble doesn’t include male companionship. Enter excursion hosts (EHs).

EHs will be vetted and selected by the cruiseline to be the male companions of three to ten women on cruiseship shore excursions. They’re not random strangers but well known to the crew. They are also fellow passengers and dine with their ten female passengers every supper. And they are limited to at most ten due to this. Ten women being the typical max limit by simply being how many can be seated at his large dining table. Seating at the table being assigned each evening and managed by the maître d’ so, during the cruise, the ten women are rotated so each has a chance to seat next to the EH on one side or the other roughly the same number of times as the other women at the table.

What do the EHs get out of the deal? A life of free endless travel surrounded by ten women wherever he goes. In addition to a free cabin, they don’t pay for any passenger service (laundry, medical care in the ship’s clinic [if the cruiseline is smart, it will offer free traveler’s medical insurance, Viagra and condoms]), congruities (but only getting weekly maid service of their cabin), and get all the top-tier cruise packages (drinks, specialty dining, Internet, etc.). They, not the cruiseline, pick which shore excursions they go on because nothing can destroy a shore excursion more than making a man do one he hates and nothing sells a shore excursion more than a man looking forward to it. And if the cruiseline lets the EH decide which he goes on the night before, he’ll likely put it up for a vote during supper the day before. But if these excursions just HAVE to be scheduled beforehand, the host can pick them and the women can then see which ones he is going on and then decide if they want to be part of his group that does them. And the only other obligation required of the EH is allowing the women to eat with him for supper with seating be assigned by the maître d’. Now if he suggests or agrees to do other stuff with the women that evening or during a sea day … such as everyone doing the spa, going to see a theater show, or watching a movie out on the pool deck … that is up to him and no one else … well, besides ten women pleading with him to do it with them.

As for who these EHs need to be, officially, they’ll need to be fit (no beer bellies, but possibly spare tires) so they can physically do shore excursions, extroverts, over 40 (as women typically prefer older men, probably the ideal age is 60 and, as long as they’re healthy and physically active, I doubt there will be an upper age limit for EHs as there will always be single RICH women of very advanced years who would like an EH older than they are or at least as close as a man can get), at least six feet tall (as women prefer tall men), pass a STD test (and these might be done every cruise in the ship’s clinic), no criminal record, and single (verified by the same background check done for criminal record). Unofficially, my bet is the cruiselines will require them to be handsome (not Brad Pitt handsome but not ugly) and even require them to be straight to better sell at least the possibility of romance to the women. [That last one didn’t really need to be the case with dance hosts but my bet is it will need to be the case with EHs due to the women dealing with them more on shore excursions, at supper, and likely other times. While some women do like to have gay male friends, most don’t and many will want at least the illusion of possible romance. Now could a gay man pretend to be straight to be an EH? Yes, but would a gay man in this day and age where gay men can be openly gay in most Western countries around the world be willing to remain in the closet for just free travel? And even if they tried, one slip and the gig’s up. They sneak away to a gay bar in port, a gay crew member sees them, doesn’t like it that the guy is misleading guests (and likely also just doesn’t like that particular EH or just the idea of EHs), and reports them. Then their “invite” will be simply retracted for future cruises.] Given all the limitations listed above for who can be an EH, that’s going to be a small percentage of the male population. The above means tossing aside men under 40 and men over 40 who are fat, ugly, married, gay, under six feet, ex-cons, incurable STD carriers, or introverts. [Interestingly enough, I, Jack Decker and Better Tomorrow Challenges creator, would so qualify.] Not to mention that those under 65 essentially have to give up their careers to do this gig and those 65 and older have to want to do this for their retirement. And that means they’ll be leaving all their family and lifelong friends to do this. Not to mention children and, even more importantly, grandchildren. THUS, finding men who want to be EHs will NOT be an easy task for cruiselines BUT the cruiseline that is able to get them will VERY likely get a lot of single female passengers picking their ships to sail on.

Enticing qualified men to then pick their cruiseline to do this “volunteer” work on will be quite the challenge. This made even worse by other cruiselines wanting to recruit them as well. My bet is that few of these qualified men will be interested in doing the same cruise week after week. Most will want to go on longer cruises to different locations with the most preferred cruises being around-the-world cruises. [If I were an EH, these are the only ones I’d consider. For if my cruiseship only did weekly cruises, I would feel I would barely get to know the women at my table before they’d be gone and replaced with new strangers.] How many EHs would then be needed? First, find out how many single women typically take said cruise. Divide by ten BUT you also need to take into the cruiseline’s wish to attract even more single female passengers that cruise normally gets by having extra EHs onboard. And you know hope runs eternal. That and it is better to have more EHs than needed than too few and women will love having fewer women in the group so they get more of the EH’s attention. Oh, and luxury cruiselines will know this and thus might reduce the ratio from 10 to 1 to possibly as little as 5 to 1 and even just 3 to 1 (a table of four). The more luxurious the cruiseline, the lower the ratio they’ll likely advertise. “On Silverseas’ around-the-world cruises, our female-to-male ratio for our male excursion hosts is just 3 to 1. That’s a nice table for four.” [Personally, if I were an EH, I’d prefer a 10:1 ratio than a 3:1. The more, the merrier and the better the chance that the more of them I’ll like.]

Aside from offering cruises EHs will like to go on, other things cruiselines might use to entice EHs to pick their cruiseline could be:

+ Better cabin. As these men are truly rare, they might need to be offered the top-tier suites from the start to even consider sailing with a cruiseline. And then there is the very likely possibility that an EH with a big suite will host a weekly “pajama movie night” in his cabin for all in his group, which will likely be the one of the biggest highlights of the cruise for the women. Needless to say, it would be quite hard to pack in eleven people in an inside cabin. Given this, expect cruiseline to offer their EHs the largest suites and “suggest” these before-mentioned parties to them as an event. Possibly a monthly or even weekly event on long cruises. The cruiseline might sweeten the pot by offering a white-glove maid service of his cabin the day of the pajama movie night.

+ How much vacation AWAY from the ship they can take each year and still hold onto their gig. A vacation from a “vacation”.

+ Ability to earn free cruises for family and friends. This should change being an EH from being isolated from family and friends to being able to connect with them in a meaningful fun way. On these cruises, the EHs will not act as EHs so they can spend time with their family and friends. These “gift” cruises given during cruising off-season, of course.

Another perk for being an EH will likely come in the form of gifts the women will give them, especially at the end of their cruise. Any cruiseline with one functioning brain cell will kiss right up to these EHs by offering to help them create gift registries in all the ship’s stores. Gift registries that the women can then ask about and select from. Expect these men to then suddenly become avid collectors of coins, postal stamps, and men’s jewelry (from Rolex watches to diamond cufflinks) as well as possibly comic books, trading cards (from sports to Magic the Gathering), and memorabilia (from sports to rock n’ roll to Disney).

I predict that these men will quickly get the same offers from all the cruiselines and then they will likely pick the ship based on how well they like the crew. The better they’re treated, the more likely they’ll remain. And I’m sure the cruiselines will know that, as with hairstylists, female passengers will follow their favorite EHs to whichever cruiseline they’re traveling on.

Now let us talk about SEX! No, seriously, let us talk about sex. Almost all cruiselines who had “dance hosts” had a “strict” policy of “no sex with passengers” but my bet is there was never a cruiseship that kicked a dance host off their ship for sleeping with their female passengers. The “no sex” rule was more for show and to not gain the cruiseship the reputation of being a brothel for lonely single women over 30. But here’s the thing: even in this day and age of more liberal views on sex, I predict cruiselines will keep this “no sex” rule for both of those reasons. The cruiseline can then deny involvement … while turning a blind eye to when it happens … and it is just another excuse the EH can use to gently turn down a woman’s advances.

Once a cruiseline is able to get enough of these rare men, I predict that cruiseline will advertise the Hell out of this to single women. That and scare the living crap out of single women about how dangerous it is to travel alone UNLESS they travel in the complete safety of a cruiseship and how comfortably it is. Male companionship AND safety? Enter the Piped Piper and single middle-age to senior-citizen women will follow in droves.

I can even see some cruiselines posting on their websites who are a ship’s EHs and then letting up to ten single female passengers to “reserve a seat at his table”. If the cruiseline cannot allow such last-minute decisions, the excursions the EH will do that cruise will then be listed with his EH profile. If the EH can decide during supper the night before the next excursion day, his EH profile should post his like and dislikes so the women know in advance what he will likely do with his group.

Now there is the potential “problem” that single women won’t want to be part of a specific EH’s group. Problem from the cruiseline’s standpoint, not the women’s. After all, the point of the EH is to attract single female passengers to join his group BUT if he doesn’t, he isn’t valuable to the cruiseline. No value, no gig. If an EH simply cannot routinely attract enough women to join his group, the cruiseline will simply no longer let him travel with them as an EH.  And let us be honest here about that. It will probably be due to his race, age and/or appearance. Single women are there to have fun, not advance some social agenda. If they are not attracted to the man, they won’t book to be part of his excursion group. If this continues to happen, that guy will soon no longer be given EH status.

Still another potential problem is who gets to be part of an EH’s group. First reserve and pay full in advance? While they will fill up the groups fast, they might be all inside cabin passengers. In other words, not high-profit passengers. If profit is the goal (which is the only reason for having EHs), it will be higher the cabin class gets in. A higher tier cabin bumping out the lowest tier cabin or if more than one are of the lowest tier cabin, the last one to reserve and pay in full for a seat doesn't get in. If this is done, cruiselines will likely let passengers put their name on more than one EH’s “table” list and rank which one they’d want to be part of if they qualify for more than one.

1) First cruiseline to employ a full-time employee whose sole focus is recruiting, screening, managing, and keeping EHs.

2) First cruiseline to have a department of at least ten full-time employees whose sole focus is EHs.

3) First cruiseline to have at least 100 EHs active at the same time across their fleet.