Tilla’s software for crew change management

Niklas Weidmann, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Tilla

Crew change management software from Tilla is now used on more than 600 vessels, typically saving 14% of flight costs. 113 users in Stolt saved 550 hours of work in the first month. Managing director Niklas Weidmann explained

Report from People Tech Maritime Hamburg

Tilla of Berlin makes software for managing crew changes, particularly flights. Its software is now used on more than 600 vessels, including operators such as Peter Döhle Schiffahrts, Exmar, Essberger, Wilson, Stolt Tankers and Stödig Ship Management.

It is used to make 100,000 flight bookings a year. Clients typically see 14 per cent reduction in flight costs, said Niklas Weidmann, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Tilla, speaking at People Tech Maritime Hamburg in May.

Stolt Tankers is using the software to manage crew changes on its entire owned fleet of 100 chemical parcel tankers.

In 2025, the company was given financial backing from Motion Ventures and Exmar.

The platform brings together multiple pieces of data, including ship schedules, crewing data, port agency information and real-time flight data.

Crewing teams can use the software to make flight bookings and inform all the relevant parties.

If a crewmember misses a flight connection, all of the rescheduling can be done by the crewing manager in minutes from a smart phone.

Crew travel is often not something companies think about very much, because they assume the way they do it is the best and only way, Mr Weidmann said.

Crewing managers typically decide what flights they want and ask a travel agent to book the flight and send the ticket to the seafarer.

But the workload quickly builds if a seafarer misses a flight or a connection. Someone needs to book a new flight, change the car pick-up at the airport, and inform the master. This may happen in the middle of the night in the crewing manager’s time zone.

And flights often change in price. Seafarers have the luxury of being able to rebook flights. But normally nobody bothers if a flight becomes available at a lower price, because of the hassle involved. Tilla makes this much easier.

The software records all decisions made, so you can later see which decisions were made and by who. This means you have a starting point for improving the process.

It also helps people keep records of why they made a certain decision in case they need to justify it later. For example, choosing a more expensive flight so that a crewmember is better rested when joining the vessel.

Mr Weidmann suggests that companies think of “crew change management” as a major company activity and cost, and track how much time and money they spend on it, then see how much using software like Tilla can help them.

If you need persuading of the benefits of the system, consider how many e-mails were generated in your company for crew changes over the past month, how often there was a competitive tendering for a rebooking, and how often a travel agent informed you about a cheaper flight, he said.

Stolt Tankers

Stolt Tankers, using the software for its fleet of 100 chemical parcel tankers, reported that its 113 users of the software together saved 550 hours of work in the first month, roughly 5 hours per person. 101 of these users were captains and chief engineers onboard.

It chose to implement the software after 2 pilot projects, Mr Weidmann said. Stolt spends $10m every year on crew travel, with over 1,000 flights a month.

Stolt was previously managing crew changes the same way most companies do, outsourcing various tasks to travel agents and port agents.

After it introduced Tilla, travel for crew signing off vessels was managed by shore teams; travel for crew signing onto vessels was managed by the vessel master.

The seafarers themselves are not users, but interact by receiving an e-mail or WhatsApp message when their travel is booked.

Complexity of crew flights

To consider how complex crew flight management can be, consider what happens if your own flight gets cancelled on a business trip. You need to rebook it, and maybe also book a hotel. It is a hassle, but there is only one decision maker (you), only one time zone and only one airline involved, Mr Wiedmann said.

But crewing managers may have to change crew travel every time there is a change to the vessel schedule, such as a different port or arrival at a different time. “What was planned weeks ago is now wrong. You have manning agencies, masters, seafarers, who all need to know about the change,” he said.

“You have an operator in Europe, a manning agency in Bulgaria, a travel agency in India, a seafarer in the Philippines, a vessel trading somewhere off Asia.”

“What might have taken 10, 20 or 30 minutes if everyone was in the same room, now takes a day.”

It normally involves a great deal of manual communications between travel agencies, port agencies, operators, vessel master and crew.

And crewing managers do not have much control over the flight cost, beyond their initial selection of the best quote. This is the second biggest cost of crewing after wages, he said.

On an organisation level, the crewing manager may be managing the organisation across multiple offices. They don’t know which operators are making which decisions and why, and whether people in different offices are following company policy. “An organisation that can't see its own decisions can't improve them, enforce policy, or replicate what's working.”

Saving on flight costs

When booking flights, a crewing manager will normally make some effort to get the best price, such as sending the request for the flight to a few travel agencies and taking the best quote.

But when a flight needs to be rebooked, the same travel agent has no incentive to look for the best price. The commission is already earned; the incentive is just to minimise the work involved.

But flight prices continually change. They can be $1000 on Tuesday, $1200 on Wednesday and $800 on Thursday. No human being can monitor all the flight price changes, he said.

And perhaps flight prices have changed so that it becomes cheaper to exchange crew at a different port, or for the seafarer to travel via a different route. There is no system to change the planning.

With Tilla, after the initial booking is made the system continuously checks whether a cheaper option is available. If it is, it can rebook automatically.