Why not to play the casino on a cruise ship
By 2018 two million people a year from the UK and Ireland will take a cruise holiday. A third of these passengers will cruise around the Mediterranean while almost half of them will depart from a UK port.
But regardless of the region and departure point all cruise ships will operate, for the most part, on international waters allowing them to exploit a captive audience which have money in their pocket and few places to spend it.
In fact, with food and drink an ‘all-in’ with most people’s cruise package, primarily it is the conveniently placed on-board casino which offers holidaymakers an opportunity to part with their cash.
We say ‘conveniently placed’ as on-ship Casinos are always found in the centre of cruise liners meaning tourists have to walk through them several times a day to reach activities bars and restaurants.
They are plush and luring but they are also unregulated; that ‘international waters’ status means cruise lines casinos are not bound by any gambling laws meaning they can and do unduly exploit their customers.
In many instances seasoned casino players can and will see how they are being exploited. Blackjack tables featuring strange rules such as ‘no double downs after splits’, ‘double downs on 9’s, 10’s and 11’s only’, dealers ‘hitting on soft 17’s’ and payments of 6/5 about a ‘blackjack’. All are detrimental to the players.
Then there’s the roulette wheels which may feature American-style ‘double zeros’ with a small disparity between minimum and maximum stakes. It is hard recouping losses when the minimum bet is £/€5 and the maximum stakes are just £/€10.
Understandably you are likely to head to the slot machines to get your entertainment but, on a cruise liner, they exploit customers more than the gaming tables.
Whereas the typical Las Vegas slot offers a return of 95% and online slots average out around 97-98%, their at sea floating counterparts can, and often do, return less than 75% of their take.
If this piracy is not enough to send you overboard lookout for hidden charges; holidaymakers can incur a charge when buying gaming chips and look out for a three percent charge to put chip purchases and winnings on to and off your credit account.
Piracy! Like the description, very fitting
Wow, what a rip-off. FOBT’s eat your heart out
It really is amazing what you learn – and have never thought of before. Cruise companies really do milk you for all they can