Princess Clamps Down on Smoking on Cruise Ships

Princess Cruises soon will begin enforcing what some call one of the most incendiary new rules in cruising: a ban on smoking in all guest staterooms, including the balcony. The new rule, which takes effect Jan. 15, will impact the Santa Clarita company’s entire fleet. Smoking will be restricted to a cigar lounge, a section of the disco and casino, and a portion of the open decks. Smokers caught breaking the rule face a $250 fine. The smoking ban is one of the most controversial hot-button issues to hit cruising. It has elicited hundreds, if not thousands of comments across multiple cruising chat rooms and message boards. “This is a massively big deal,” said Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor-in-chief of Cruise Critic, an industry publication and website. “Smoking is by far and away the most powerful thing people hate on cruise ships.” Brown said a recent post on cruisecritic.com about shipboard smoking was read by 77,000 people and elicited 316 comments. The vast majority — 92 percent — hate smoking and the second-hand smoke that comes with it, Brown said, while 8 percent defend their right to smoke aboard a cruise ship and defend it vocally. One commentator on cruisecritic.com wrote: “The problem is that second-hand smoke is a carcinogen….how can you expect me to accept the fact that your smoke is hurting me and those around me?” A smoker responded: “I do not intentionally annoy other balcony cruisers, but I too paid for this cruise and while I must accept all the annoyances other passengers create for me, I don’t think it is too much to ask to have a small area of the ship to enjoy my guilty pleasure! Pick on the line cutters, the chair hogs, the falling down drunks, the unattended unruly children, or the late night loud talkers in the halls for a while and leave the smokers alone!” Princess Cruises announced the ban in June following a careful assessment of customer preferences. A division of Miami-based Carnival Corp., which reported $15.8 billion in revenues for the full year 2011, the cruise line said the new policy reflects changing customer desires to further restrict areas where smoking is allowed. In banning smoking on balconies, Princess moved beyond most other cruise lines, including other divisions of Carnival — Holland America Line and Carnival Cruise Lines — which banned smoking in guest staterooms, but not on the balconies. “Our consumer studies now show that smokers are a small minority of our passengers, and that the large majority of passengers value having their primary living space onboard smoke-free,” said Jan Swartz, executive vice president at Princess. Carnival Corp. has said only 5 percent of its passengers want to smoke in their cabins, and the number of passengers who want to smoke has been declining. That follows a national trend; in 2010, 19.3 percent of Americans over 18 smoked, down from 20.9 percent in 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). California has the fewest smokers besides Utah, as less than 13 percent of the population smokes, according to CDC. Some say the cruise ship industry has been slower than the rest of the hospitality industry to ban smoking in guestrooms and public places. And the industry certainly is behind cities such as New York and Los Angeles that have banned smoking in the workplace, public areas and restaurants. Some of the industry’s reluctance has come from fear of losing potential business, especially group business. Carnival built a totally smoke-free ship — the Paradise —which launched in 1998. It only remained smoke-free for six years; casino revenues were hard hit as a result of the total ban, Brown said. Renaissance Cruises of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had the only other completely smoke-free ship; the company filed for bankruptcy in 2001. “Maybe they were ahead of their time,” Brown said. While no line since Paradise and Renaissance has moved to totally eliminate smoking, clearly the movement today is to restrict smoking to casinos, bars or designated outdoor spaces. Norwegian Cruise Line will prohibit smoking in all staterooms starting this month, as well. Royal Caribbean International only allows smoking on balconies and in designated smoking areas in lounges and open decks. Disney Cruise Line has never allowed smoking in guest staterooms or other interior spaces, only on certain exterior locations. Viking River Cruises, a cruise line based in Woodland Hills, also bans smoking in all interior spaces and staterooms. Each ship has an outdoor smoking area. That policy has not changed in years, a spokesperson said. While Princess has gone further than others in banning smoking on balconies, it is not the only cruise line to do so, a Princess spokesman said. Crystal Cruises, Azamara Cruises and Celebrity Cruises have adopted similar policies, she said. Given Princess’s history, Brown said that frankly, she was surprised it took the company this long to act on banning smoking in guestrooms and balconies. In 2006, she said, a smoker on a balcony flicked a cigarette butt into the ocean; a small ember was blown onto a neighboring balcony, where it caught some clothes hanging up to dry. The ensuing fire, fanned by high winds and the ship’s own speed, destroyed much of the midsection of the 109,000-ton Star Princess sailing off the coast of Jamaica, leading indirectly to the death of one man who died of heart failure, and causing 11 guests to suffer smoke inhalation. Given the extent of the damage, Brown said it was a miracle that more were not hurt. “To me, that incident should have sparked the controversy,” Brown said. “It was a bit of a wake-up call for the industry.”