Royal Caribbean can’t eliminate smoking in its casinos. Every time it has tested doing that, revenue has dropped.
The cruise line’s CEO addressed that topic on his 2022 President’s Cruise.
“It’s a bit of a conundrum,” Bayley said during a question and answer session on Ovation of the Seas. “The dilemma is that there are many people who do want to smoke in the casino. I know that’s not a popular response, but it’s it’s the truth. I’m not judging anyone or anything, but there’s a large group of people who do want to smoke in the casino.”
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Testing non-smoking casinos has not worked for the cruise line.
“Every, I would say every couple of years, we do test this and we take one or two or three ships and we ban smoking in the casino. And the result is less people go in the casino and that’s the reality of it,” he shared.
Cruise lines are not in the business of losing money so Royal Caribbean has kept its casinos with smoking and non-smoking areas. In theory, you can only smoke when actively playing, but that’s hard to enforce.
And, in many part of the non-smoking section, there plenty of smoke as the smoke itself is not aware of the non-smoking section. Royal Caribbean has been working on an imperfect solution to giving non-smokers their own space.
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Oasis and Icon-class ships offer smoke-free casinos
Royal Caribbean first offered a smaller, secondary smoke-free casino on Wonder of the Seas, which was the world’s largest cruise ship when it launched. That was sort of an accident as Wonder of the Seas had been built to sail in China.
The second casino, called the Golden Room, was actually meant to be a high-rollers room. Since high rollers generally are not sailing on Royal Caribbean in the United States, the Golden Room, became secondary smoke-free casino.
Similar rooms were added to the previous Oasis Class ships as the former Jazz on 4 became smoke-free casinos. New ships Icon of the Seas and Utopia of the Seas have these smaller smoke-free casinos as well.
It’s a solution that does offer a true smoke-free space, but the secondary casinos only have a few tables and a limited selection of slot machines. That’s fine for slot players who find a machine they like, but the table games are often much less crowded than the ones in the main casino.
To fight that, Royal Caribbean has tried a number of ways to entice people into the smaller, smoke-free casinos.
The late-night buffet has a number of hot and cold options.
Image source: Daniel Kline/ComeCruiseWith.com
Royal Caribbean casino adds late-night buffet
Royal Caribbean has tried using a number of incentives to get passengers to visit the non-smoking casinos. The cruise line generally hosts a reception there on opening night and it offers a number of freeplay giveaways that are unique to the smoke-free areas.
It has also notably stepped up waiter service from the casino bar as the secondary casino does not have its own bar.
On some ships, the cruise line has also been offering a late-night buffet in the smoke-free casino. Both the main casino and smoke-free casino on Oasis-class ships have buffet areas.
They’re generally only used for special events. Some passengers, however, have reported seeing a buffet spread being put out around 10 p.m. on various Oasis-class ships.
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That was the case the week of Jan. 5-12 on Wonder of the Seas.
Each night the cruise line would put out a small selection of hot and cold appetizers as well as some small desserts and the display would be restocked at least until midnight. This was offered only in the smoke-free area and it was not promoted via signs or in the daily Cruise Compass.
There was nothing stopping cruisers from the main casino (or even non-gamblers) from entering the casino and making a plate. That did not appear to happen much due to the lack of promotion of the casino dining offering.
A similar buffet has been reported on other Royal Caribbean ships.
Royal Caribbean did not immediately return a weekend request for comment.
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