Shipping trends: A look into a Millennial’s mind

Shipping trends: A look into a Millennial’s mind
09/03/18 https://safety4sea.com/shipping-trends-look-millennials-mind/

Millennials, one of the largest generations in history, is undoubtedly at its prime spending years. Have you ever wondered how the Millennials are poised to reshape maritime industry? Their unique experiences are going to change the ways we live and work, forcing shipping organisations to examine how they will operate for decades to come. Just think how Baby Boomers, Gen Z, and Gen X are acting nowadays; they leverage digital tools in order to interact and engage with the world, becoming Millennial-minded! Here are seven trends that may prove if a shipping organization is ready to welcome the Millennials or not.

1. Sustainability: Like in our everyday purchases ashore, the Millennials or the Millennial - minded shipping operators demand more from the organisations they choose to cooperate with, with respect to the packaging, the way they treat their employees, and how they impact the planet. Subsequently, shipping organisations strive to provide more efficient and environmentally friendly methods for conducting global trade! As far as the environmentally conscious attributes of recycling is concerned, a very new trend is the container reuse forging a new path in housing engineering.

2. Digital Transactions: Maritime industry is embracing blockchain technology; through public-key cryptography and the transformation of digital currencies to cryptocurrencies and data, organisations have stronger security reducing fraud and error risk. Furthermore, with Bitcoin becoming a ubiquitous term during the past few months, shipping transactions will be nothing like we thought. The city of Dubai has already its own cryptocurrency while more and more organisations accept bitcoins making the transaction process decentralized and eventually easy to track.

3. Maritime Training: Physical experiences meet the digital ones to enhance learning practices. Shipping organisations are changing the way of teaching and learning with platforms that connect individuals from all over the world; 3D animated marine safety videos and Virtual Reality (VR) are among the most popular digital means of training in the industry.

4. Wellness VS holistic health: As of now maritime industry has been focusing on wellness best practices; in other words what employees can achieve when using a holistic lifestyle both onboard and ashore. However, holistic health has been a buzzword lately supporting reaching higher levels of wellness, changing behaviors to improve mental, physical, and emotional health.

5. Data: Shipping in the years to come will be more transparent, humane and personalized with respect to targeting; organisations are going to treat partners like humans, not like numbers.

6. Cyber Security Careers in Shipping: Millennials are more aware of cybersecurity careers than they were a few years ago while career opportunities in this field rise as well. When it comes to maritime, several incidents have shown that the industry needs to adopt cyber security policies more than ever before.

7. Influencer marketing: Marketers today are tapping into influencer marketing. Did you know that there are shipping and logistics influencers as well? They might be very little, but they create a new channel to build credibility with existing partners or reach new ones.

In conclusion, the maritime world is jumping into conversations about sustainable strategies, bitcoin, growth hacking, holistic health, digital training and plenty more. Considering the aforesaid, anyone could say that Millennials are more than a demographic!