Most cruise ships these days have a casino. Given the supposed luxury of cruise lingers, casino gambling is a great fit for the vacation experiences. Passengers often take great pleasure in putting on their finest glad rags and heading down for a night dancing with lady luck.
Inside the casino aboard a cruise ship, you’ll find table games like roulette and blackjack, as well perhaps a poker room, and at least a few slot machines. But should you play them? Well, that depends if you like to gamble at an even greater disadvantage than you would at a land-based casino.
The Only Game in Town…
Cruise companies are, of course, businesses. They want to make profits and the casino is a great opportunity to do just that. The other thing with cruises is that a single company is in charge of everything. There is literally zero competition – spend your money in the Italian restaurant or the Mexican, it’s all going to the same company anyway.
Online or on-land casinos face a lot competition. On the water, they don’t have that competition. Even if there is actually more than one casino on a ship, it will be the same company that operates it. This means that if a player doesn’t like some aspect of the service in a cruise ship casino, they can either suck it up and play or they can simply not gamble. It’s not like they can go try a different casino until they’re back on land!
This means casinos don’t need to worry about offering competitive odds. You’ll see it all over the casino too. Blackjack tables paying less than 3:2 for hitting blackjack, high rake on poker tables, and low return-to-player ratings on the slots.
All this makes it less likely that the player will walk away in profit and more likely that the casino will make money. The casino doesn’t have to worry about people venturing offsite looking for other gambling opportunities because it’ll be a long swim to the nearest alternative!
Slot manufacturers will often make the same game with different return-to-player ratings. Even if you see a game that you won big on during some visit to a land-based casino, the version offered by the cruise company might be much less lucrative. In fact, given that there is literally zero incentive for the cruise company to reduce its house edge, you’ll almost certainly find that the house edges are more than a little generous and you’ll definitely never find the kind of bonuses common online at sites like ND365.
Their Cruise, Their Rules…
It’s also worth noting that cruise ships spend most of their time in international waters. This means they are not governed by the same regulatory bodies are govern land-based gambling. Although the world’s largest cruise association, Cruise Lines International Association, does provide some guidance to companies offering games of chance on board their ships, minimum odds are not enforced in anywhere near the same way as they are on land.
That’s not to say that slots on cruise ships will offer disgracefully low RTP ratings. However, when compared to their land-based counterparts, you’re much less likely to find games into the high 90 percent range as you would be elsewhere.
What if You Need a Watchdog?
Another less immediate concern also relates to the lack of regulatory body overseeing casinos on board cruise ships. Agencies like the UK Gambling Commission or the Malta Gaming Authority don’t just enforce minimum odds, they also provide some form of recourse in the event that a casino does refuse to pay a player.
Say you were playing the slots on a cruise ship and you hit a massive jackpot. You could end up taking a winning slip over to cashier and them flat out refusing to pay you. What do you do? In Las Vegas, you would take the matter up with the Nevada Gaming Control Board. In the UK, you’d approach the UK Gambling Commission. On a cruise, you could take it up with the casino itself. If that didn’t work, you’d have to launch a complaint with management of the cruise company.
Usually, this will involve waiting until the end of your holiday to contact them. By this time, your trip could be ruined entirely, having spent several nights having it out with the casino management on board. What’s even worse is the fact that even when you take your complaint to the parent company, you could still hear the news that your prize is invalid (for literally whatever reason they want). That would leave you only one option left to try.
The complaining cruise casino customer’s final opportunity for a favourable result would be to contact the Cruise Lines International Association. However, given that this is more of an industry self-regulatory body those agencies that oversee actual casino gambling, there is still no legal obligation for the casino to pay out.
We have never actually heard of this occurring and it really probably shouldn’t play too big a part in your decision about whether to play at a cruise casino or not. However, with the lack of regulatory oversight for the venues, it could happen literally at any time. Maybe you’d be the unlucky person to have their winnings withheld and find out the hard way about the lack of accountability in the cruise ship casino industry.
Should I Avoid the Casino on a Cruise Ship?
Casino gambling is meant to be fun and getting dolled up to hit the tables or slots for a night at sea can indeed be a blast. We’d never recommend you steer fully clear of a casino on a cruise ship. We’d just urge you to take a moment to consider that your overall expected value at the casino will be considerably lower than it would be either online or in a land-based casino. This is down to the low RTP-rated games at casinos, made possible by the lack of regulatory oversight and competition out at sea.
Whilst the risk of the casino not paying out some large jackpot cannot fully be overlooked; we don’t think it’s going to be worth avoiding the casino for. It’s worth remembering that public image is important to casinos and although there might not be a regulatory body to force the company to pay out, the threat of particularly inflammatory article appearing in the press about the company might have the same impact anyway.
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