OK, so maybe you don’t want to become a butler, as I suggested you might in last week’s blog posting. How about a Gentleman Host®? What’s that, you ask? They’re the suave guys who oil their way across the dance floor aboard cruise ships with women who don’t have partners or whose partners don’t care to dance.

These guys aren’t amateurs who happened to be well spoken. They’re professionals, and although they don’t get paid a wage (in fact, many must pay $30 a day), they do get to see the world in style and hold a lot of women in their arms. Their airfare to and from a cruise ship may be paid, meals are provided, there’s a laundry and dry cleaning allowance, and accommodations are free.

“Gentleman Hosts®” is actually a registered trademark, and Compass Speakers, a Florida-based firm that supplies speakers and other professionals to cruise lines, uses the name and does the hiring for such hosts for the following cruise lines: Cunard, Asuka, Silversea and Majestic America Line. Run into another very good dancer hired by a cruise line on some other ship, and he’s not a Gentleman Host®.

Are you man enough for this?

Compass stipulates you should be single and be between the ages of 40 and 68, though exceptions are made for uncommonly smooth operators of a younger age and especially youthful-looking men of an older age. The most important qualification, other than charm and panache, is the ability to dance. As in cha-cha, fox trot, swing, waltz and rumba. And it wouldn’t hurt if you know how to do some salsa, merengue, tango and polka, as well.

Tracy Robison of Compass, who has “several hundred” hosts in her database from all over the world, told me Gentleman Hosts® usually travel aboard ships in pairs. During the day they attend ballroom dance classes, and in the evening you’ll find them in the ship lounge and, obviously, eager to dance. Dating (even after a cruise is over) is strictly forbidden. And as far as Robison knows, no marriages between hosts and guests have occurred.

She was kind enough to introduce me to Alan Benedict, a host who makes his living as a funeral director in his real life in Southern California. (“No,” Alan told me, “I don’t do the cruising for business!”)

Benedict has worked as a host for 18 years, taking on two to four cruises a year. He slipped in at the tender age of 38, and he says he’s going to keep dancing at sea as long as he can. I couldn’t help but ask the question I know you’re wondering: Has he ever been asked to go back to a woman’s stateroom for the evening?

“Yes, but that’s a huge no-no” he told me. “Even if the lady just asks to me escort her because she’s had too many martinis, you ask a crew member to do that.”

Spoken like a true gentleman

You can hear my interview with Robison and Benedict on a podcast of one of my recent KFWB (Los Angeles) radio shows.

Meanwhile, you might want to brush up on your cha-cha.