These cruisers say they live at sea by collecting casino perks – is it too good to be true?

• Cruise lines are handing out more and more free cruises or discounted cruises to passengers that gamble heavily in the casino.
• Some people online report doing this full-time and living on cruise ships without ever having the full-fare.
• Is this story too good to be true?

Greg Brockman spends half the way year living at sea, and his method for doing so is an interesting one. Brockman told Royal Caribbean Blog how he uses casino perks to spend almost half the year at sea, paying excessively less in cruise fares.

He says: “The casino plays a huge role in my ability to travel as much as I do on the budget I set for myself.

“I took 100% of my cruise fare as my budget for the casino and I played just enough to earn a complimentary interior cabin. Then I stop playing.” 

Brockman says with the casino loyalty program he can cruise 30+ a year, generally paying less than 50% of the total cruise fares. However, he does have to meet a certain quota of casino spend to keep the free and discounted cruises coming.

Brockman isn’t the only to get attention online for his gambling and living at sea method, Laura Butler has turned some heads by sharing her story online and turned

Butler shares how she also gets by on casino cruises, however, she is a bit more blunt in her advice.

“If you’re going to go into the casino and get into their comped cruise program, you need to make sure you are losing as little money as possible.

“The casino house will always win. At the end of the day, the more time you spend in the casino, the house will always win.”

If you’ve ever gambled in a cruise ship casino, you know that things can escalate very quickly. When crew notice a gambler who appears particularly ready to spend some cash, generally this person will very quickly have free drinks in their hands.

If they keep gambling and spend enough, then they’ll often even often be offered free cruises in the future, with the cruise line banking on the fact that their casino activity will keep up and it will be worthwhile financially for the cruise line to have gifted them a free cruise. 

This type of conducts is already a grey area for cruise lines, due to cases like that of Aaron Rose, who lost $30,000 racking up gambling debts on P&O Cruises, while mourning a loved one. 

Carter Capner Law has even opened a class action lawsuit against Carnival Corp, accusing them of having predatory gambling practices.

Royal Caribbean are reportedly offering more and more of these free cruises for casino players. Carnival Cruises has even recently offered some adults-only casino cruises that don’t allow children and were offered to guests with a record of high casino use. 

With more free cruises being handed out and more people hearing about this unique lifestyle, here’s what you should know.

Can you really save money gambling at sea?

But can you really save money by gambling at sea? While some present their experience in a way that makes it seem that yes, they do come out ‘ahead’. The reality isn’t that simple. 

The first thing to note is that while Royal Caribbean does have a loyalty program particularly for its casino, it doesn’t have a fixed amount of points that guests have to spend before they start getting offered free cruises. Generally, cruisers report getting an offer at around 1500 casino points of spend. As an estimate, this can take about AUD$11,000 of spend. 

Now, if a cruiser were to gamble until they get offers, then take the offer, enjoy one free cruise and then stop, this could be a way to get ahead of the system. However, there are still some possible complications.

As mentioned, you don’t know exactly how much you have to gamble to start getting offers, and you don’t exactly know what this offer will be. This means that you can’t guarantee you’ll get an offer just by gambling a certain amount, and that there’s no framework for you to do the maths and work out if you come out ahead or not.

The second thing to consider is that the cruise line always comes out ahead, even if some individual passengers do as well. If a cruiser is particularly lucky in the casino, over the short term they might save money on cruise fares by incurring offers for free or discounted cruises. However, this is not the statistical probability, overall cruisers will lose out, even if some get lucky.

The other key factor is the more you gamble, the more likely you are to fall behind. While we like to think it might be easy to gamble until we get an offer, and then take the offer up and simply stop gambling, it isn’t so easy. Gambling is obviously an addictive practice and having free flowing alcohol won’t help matters. 

Furthermore, if you want the free cruises to keep coming, you have to keep gambling, due to ‘house edge’ that the casino has, the longer you try and do this for, the more likely you are to fall behind. 

While some may enjoy gambling on a cruise and be excited by possible unexpected benefits and offers, it shouldn’t be thought of as a glamourised lifestyle of how to live at sea for free, with that vision being too good to be true.

If you do opt to take these offers, make sure to stay vigilant of how much you’re spending.

Are travel agents losing out as well?

Now these casino offers are becoming so frequent that even travel agents are complaining, stating that they’re missing out on commissions. 

Royal Caribbean Blog reported that during a recent Q&A on Star of the Seas, many travel agents expressed their frustration at the fact that Royal Caribbean is giving away too many cruises to passengers with high levels of casino activity, and that is eating away at their commissions. 

Many agents find that they book a cruise for someone like normal, only for that cruiser to then get an offer to get on that same cruise for free. Guests will generally then cancel the original booking, leaving the travel agents without any, or very little commission. 

Agents also reportedly noted that Royal Caribbean appears to be sending out more casino offers than they used to, which is escalating the issue for them. 

A travel agent said to Royal Caribbean: “I’ve been a travel advisor specializing in Royal Caribbean, 75% to 80% of my sales are with Royal Caribbean because I love it very much. My husband and I escort group [cruises] a couple times a year. A lot of our passengers are now casino comps, a lot of them, and they don’t bother to come through me.

“Their reason is, well, we don’t want to bother you. We know you don’t get much commission on it. We don’t want to bother you. But, since we have group [cruises], I’m still doing the work. I have a pre-cruise party at my house, I pre-arranged excursions, I pre-arranged dining, I do all that stuff and now I feel like I’ve lost them.

“And as travel advisors, I think we would really love to partner with you on this and so that everybody’s happy. I don’t want to continue to lose my passengers. I have passengers that [have] sailed with us for 30 years and now they’re not. So again, we love everything that you do, but if you could help us partner with you on that, we would really appreciate it.”

Several other agents expressed similar concerns, expressing the importance of the issue. 

Royal Caribbean executives promised the agents they would work towards a ‘win-win’ solution.