Carnival Cruise and Royal Caribbean make popular smoking changes

Cruise ships put thousands of passengers and crew members in close proximity. In many ways, it's like living in a college dorm where rooms are small, people are packed in, and the inconsiderate actions of one person can impact a lot of people.

If you, for example, opt to be noisy in the halls late at night or have a loud argument (or loud happier activities) in your cabin after others have gone to sleep, you will wake people up. The same logic applies to how you treat public spaces.

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Leave a mess in a shared bathroom or be a slob at the buffet and your actions have an impact on other people. Some actions, however, are not an attempt to be rude, but still impact other passengers. 

In a lot of these situations, the impacted party simply has the option to move. If you don't like the smell of whisky, or banana daiquiris and the person next to you at the bar is drinking either one, you only have to move a small bit away to not be impacted.

Smoking, however, cannot be avoided quite as easily. That's why Royal Caribbean and Carnival, at least on their namesake brands, place some pretty heavy limits on where people can smoke.

Where can Royal Caribbean and Carnival passengers smoke now?

Generally, both cruise lines offer a section of the pool deck where people can smoke. That can impact passengers who have to walk through that area, although they could cross the ship and go around, but often by the time they realize they have already been hit by smoke. 

Sometimes Royal Caribbean (RCL) and Carnival also offer smoking on a lower deck, which is less of a concern because it's not necessary to pass through the area to get anywhere.

The two cruise lines also offer smoking sections in their casinos. In theory, you're supposed to be actively gambling to light up, but in practice, that's very hard to enforce.

Smoking in the casino causes problems because smoke does not stay with the smoker. Even with high-powered air filtration, smoke travels and some sensitive non-smokers get angry at being exposed to second-hand smoke.

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Both Royal Caribbean and Carnival have been experimenting with adding secondary smoke-free casinos on select ships. Royal Caribbean has done with all of its Oasis-class ships, turning the former "Jazz on 4" space into a small smoke-free casino and Carnival has done the same thing on 10 of its ships. 

Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald shared on Facebook that the cruise line's newest Excel Class ships, Carnival Jubilee, the Carnival Celebration, and Carnival Mardi Gras all offer secondary smoke-free casinos. Six other ships, Carnival Firenze, Carnival Venezia, Carnival Vista, Carnival Dream, Carnival Magic, and Carnival Breeze also have secondary smoke-free casinos.

Allowing smoking on cruise ships is a financial decision

Las Vegas Strip casinos are still largely smoker-friendly despite worker-led efforts to get that changed. The reality is that some gamblers like to smoke and would gamble less (or not at all) if they're not allowed to smoke while playing.

That's a lesson Royal Caribbean International learned the hard way according to its CEO Michael Bayley. 

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"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," he said during Royal Caribbean's 2022 President's Cruise, the Royal Caribbean Blog reported.

Royal Caribbean's sister cruise line Celebrity Cruises does not allow smoking in its casinos, but that's not likely to happen on the namesake brand.

"I would say every couple of years, we do test this and we take one or two or three ships we ban smoking in the casino. And the result is less people go in the casino and that's the reality of it," he added.