Carnival streamlines in Europe

Genoa - The goal is to streamline certain functions: currently each of the five European brands of Carnival (Costa, Aida, Iberocruceros, P & O, Cunard) has its own procurement and technical offices. The giant American cruise group launched its streamlining initiative under a single umbrella. The initiative covers the whole group worldwide and will soon create two large technical centres to streamline certain activities, in Hamburg (for Europe) and Shanghai for the emerging Asian market. Costa Cruises will not be excluded from these big changes. As announced by The Meditelegraph and confirmed by multiple sources, between 60 and 80 people are expected to be transferred from Genoa to the Hamburg headquarters, with a maximum set at 100. Aida’s headquarters are also located in Germany; this brand will maintain its headquarters in Rostock, but it will share some operating divisions with Costa that will be merged in Hamburg. Estimates are still changing as the plan is still in the process of being finalized and is expected to be officially announced by March.

It mainly involves employees that perform operational activities within different divisions: technical roles, including part of the procurement department. The other offices will certainly remain in Genoa, including management and the call centre: these are two activities that would impact particularly on the quality and number of transfers. The leadership of the company and the headquarters will remain in Genoa and the same will happen with the call centre operators that were recently transferred to new offices next to the headquarters of Piazza Piaccapietra. Costa Cruise made this investment recently, moving the offices of Sampierdarena closer to the city centre and it expects to make the most of it. Costa Cruises currently has more than 1,000 employees and in December the leaders of the company announced that they would disclose all their transfer plans. The plan may have been suddenly accelerated and CEO Michael Thamm should communicate news on this front shortly.

According to the MediTelegraph’s analysis, once the plan is announced it will restore confidence that the Italian flag will continue to wave on the company’s ships. This step is important in relation to the future of the company still tied to Genoa. In any case, the unions will meet formally with the company’s management on Friday and the picture will become clearer. ”We are very concerned and we continue to monitor the situation,” says Mauro Scognamillo of Fit Cisl who will be present at the meeting on Friday. There have been no leaks from the company yet. While waiting for the summit at Piazza Piccapietra, Costa continues to reiterate: “Our head office is located in Genoa, where we employ over 1,000 people. Only in the last two years we have hired 200 new people for this location.

Our business strategy, aimed at continued growth, requires us to constantly adjust our organizational structures. The results of our final analysis will be available in a few months.” Back in 1997 when Costa Cruises was acquired by Carnival, Genoese politicians went out of their way to keep the company’s headquarters in the city: Claudio Burlando the Minister at the time (who will meet Thamm in the coming days to ask details about the Costa plan) was the architect of the International Register’s tax benefits extension plan to include cruise ships. This was a decisive move which convinced the Americans, who already had their eye on Montecarlo, to keep Costa in Genoa, tripling the employees and creating the Mediterranean headquarters of Micky Arison’s group.