Norwegian Cruise Line is cutting cabin cleaning in half for select stateroom categories as it looks to consolidate crew numbers post-pandemic.

Instead of cleaning cabins twice a day, the cruise line will instead offer housekeeping just once a day, eliminating the evening turndown service.

The move comes as Norwegian Cruise Line looks to consolidate the stateroom steward and junior stateroom steward positions into a single job title.

Balcony cabin categories and below will be be cleaned just once a day

The news was first reported by Crew Center, and is the latest move by Norwegian Cruise Line to cut staff costs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused immense disruption to the cruise industry.

While other cruise lines, facing staggering losses amid the global shutdown of cruises in 2020, decided to consolidate their fleets by selling off older tonnage, Norwegian Cruise Line was the only major cruise company to resist doing so.

Carnival Corporation sold 26 ships out of its global fleet across nine cruise brands, while Royal Caribbean shed its Pullmantur cruise brand and retired two vessels from its flagship Royal Caribbean International brand.

Norwegian Cruise Line has instead looked for savings in terms of staff expenses. The cruise line previously announced that it is reducing its shoreside staff by 9%, and has also confirmed that gratuity fees will be going up in the New Year.

This latest adjustment to the onboard service has been billed as an environmentally friendly measure by the cruise line.

Instead of reducing its fleet like other lines, Norwegian has focused on reducing staff costs post-pandemic

The adjustment “positively impacts our commitment to environmental sustainability and keeps our company in alignment with current standard practices in the cruise and hotel industries by promoting conservation of water and energy resources and by reducing the use of chemicals onboard our ships,” it said in a statement.

The stateroom categories moving to once-daily service in 2023 include studio, inside, oceanview, balcony and club balcony rooms, with the impacted crew completing their current contracts as the reduced cleaning schedule is phased in through the fleet.

The changes will first be implemented aboard Norwegian Epic (on January 8th), followed by Norwegian Sky (on January 13th), and then aboard Norwegian Jewel (on January 14th), and Norwegian Sun and Breakaway (on January 15th).