The People Behind American Ranger: How American Cruise Lines Builds Service From Within
Good service aboard a cruise ship can appear effortless.
On our Hudson River sailing aboard the new American Ranger, we had the opportunity to sit down with Marcus Bosco, American Cruise Lines’ director of hotel operations, overseeing nearly 1,200 employees across the fleet.
“Hotel is anything that doesn’t have to do with engineering and marine,” Bosco said. “So, it’s the galley, housekeeping, servers, and then the cruise excursions staff.”
But as the conversation continued, something else became clear. Bosco was not simply describing a system he manages.
He came through it himself.
From the Front Line to Fleetwide Operations
Bosco first joined American Cruise Lines through an internship that included serving and housekeeping. After finishing school, he returned to the company in a restaurant management role.
“This was on American Pride out on the Columbia and Snake rivers,” Bosco said. “Gorgeous weather, gorgeous itinerary, great food, even for the crew. And I fell in love with it.”
His next stop was training.
“I went to work for our training department, so I traveled and trained and onboarded other managers for about a year and a half.
“Then after that, I went to run a ship as hotel general manager of the America, which is now the American Splendor.”
From there came regional operations. Bosco managed the company’s central region before moving east as American Cruise Lines expanded there.
“That was where all of our growth was,” he said, recalling a period when the company was opening two new ships a year in the East before that pace increased.
His responsibilities eventually expanded to hotel operations across the fleet. That career progression also helps explain why Bosco sees frontline hotel jobs as potential beginnings rather than endpoints.
Training an American Workforce
“When I joined the company, there were six ships. We had a training center over another business, which was a couple small classrooms.”
American later moved training into a larger facility in Connecticut. As the fleet grew, the operation moved again, this time to Salt Lake City. The current center is designed to reproduce many of the environments employees will encounter once aboard.
“We went to Salt Lake and have a mock galley, a full dining room that’s about the size of our ships,” Bosco said. “They have five staterooms that are set up exactly like this.”
For Bosco, however, training is not simply about preparing someone to perform one job. It is also about creating a path to the next one.
“One of the things we were really proud about is promoting from within,” he said. “Four years ago, we stopped hiring restaurant, housekeeping managers and the guest services coordinators. And we’ve gone entirely internal.”
The results can be seen farther up the organization.
“Now, of the three regional managers, one of them started out years ago as a housekeeper with us, one was a server.
“Part of that is we want to be that career company.”
How Service Gets to the Customer
“Can they smile?” he said.
The comment sounds simple, but his point was about finding people with the disposition to work with customers and then teaching them the operation.
“If they can smile and they have a great interview and seem like they’re excited about it, we want to get them on,” Bosco said.
“And we believe we can train them … and then promote them.”
“For the promoting, we look for the people that are the leaders,” Bosco said.
American operates what Bosco called a six-month Hospitality Excellence program. Time aboard, he said, helps identify employees who are interested not only in doing their own jobs well, but also in helping other people improve.
“It really separates the people that are not ‘just here,’ like what they do, and are passionate about training others.”
Customer feedback matters too.
“Our surveys — we pay a lot of attention to those,” he said. “Not just for how to build better ships, but who are the people that are constantly in there that our guests are telling us, ‘This person was awesome. They made my cruise.’”
For passengers, that employee may simply be the person who made a meal memorable or took particularly good care of a stateroom.
“Those are the people we want to give the tools to succeed.”
Taking Care of the People Who Take Care of Passengers
Bosco’s definition of service also extends to how the company treats the people providing it.
As American Cruise Lines has developed newer ships, he said crew accommodations have changed too. Older vessels could have larger shared crew rooms. Newer designs have reduced the number of people sharing some accommodations and provided somewhat more space. Newer ships also have dedicated crew mess areas.
“We do that because if you keep the crew happy, then they want to take care of our guests,” Bosco said.
That relationship between crew experience and passenger service is part of the culture Bosco describes at American.
“When I walk on my ships, everybody knows me for personal interactions we’ve had from the employee level.”
He talked about general managers who have worked with him for six or seven years, employees moving among ships, and a company culture in which people can move from shipboard jobs to shoreside roles and back again.
“Our team is very passionate,” Bosco said.
And ultimately, when Bosco talks about American Cruise Lines’ growth, he comes back to the same people passengers encounter aboard ships such as American Ranger.
“That’s our identity. It’s the American workforce.”
