Royal Caribbean has made it easier than ever to prove your casino losses to the IRS, but it's also a sobering reminder for some cruisers.
Casinos on cruise ships are required to report significant winnings to the IRS, which has an impact on income taxes.
In practical terms, that means a situation when you get a slot machine jackpot or a video poker machine payout worth $1,200 or more. When that happens, the casino staff pays you cash on the spot for your winnings and you fill out a form that goes back to the IRS, assuming you're an American citizen.
Of course, you're supposed to technically report all casino winnings to the government, and deduct all loses. In practice, most people don't track their losses in such a manner until they run into a jackpot.
There's a catch: if you can prove you lost more money than you won in the casino, it can help offset those gains on your taxes.
To make that easier, Royal Caribbean made a change this year to get those gambling records much faster.
Royal Caribbean tracks your play when you use your SeaPass card, which offers possibly significant rewards if you gamble enough.
The tracking they do also allows them to provide casino players with year-end win/loss statements.
As of January 31, 2025, Royal Caribbean guests can download win/loss statements from 2020 to 2024.
You can view your own win/loss statement by going to the Casino Royale website.
Royal Caribbean warns, "Please note that this is not an official tax form."
Cruisers surprised by the numbers
Almost immediately after the 2024 reports became available, people started sharing their results, with a combination of both shock and awe.
For many, it was a surprise in how much or little they lost. Many cruisers were in disbelief at the number provided versus their expectations.
Reddit user btm24 shared a copy of their report, indicating they lost $14,673.22 over the course of the year in the casino.
According to this person, Royal Caribbean's report was "within 20% from my figures."
For that loss, they were able to get 11 "comped" cruises (48 total nights) for the year. That means btm24 received offers from Royal Caribbean to sail for free on select cruises 11 times. All they had to pay was taxes and fees.
According to btm24, depending on the exact offer from the casino, what's included differs. They claim most of the time the offers were for ocean view balcony’s for two people at no cost.
The free sailings are one of the most lucrative benefits of gambling on a Royal Caribbean ship.
As an example, btm24 reached the Prime level within Casino Royale's loyalty program.
"Every time we sail it’s like cutting off the head of [the] hydra, we get two sailing offers on top of our monthly offers, hear offers etc. It’s inane how decent the comp system is."
In their opinion, the rewards make up for the losses, "100% this is loss not win for me. But I enjoyed it and came in under budget so it all works out."
How much you have to gamble to start getting comp cruise offers?
If you're reading this and ready to start earning "free" cruises from the casino, there's a bit of a learning curve to understanding exactly how it all works.
The simplest strategy is to gamble enough on one sailing to earn enough points to qualify for instant certificates that you can redeem for a sailing.
Basically, you get 1 point for every $5 you wager (not win or lose, just wager) and if you get 400, 600, 1200, 2500, et al points, you can get turn around and book a cruise offer based on the list of sailings at each point threshold.
So yes, to earn 600 points, you'd have to roughly wager $3,000 in one sailing.
You can view the list of cruise tiers online with a clever hack, or wait until you get on the ship and then see the list at the casino host's desk.
While this strategy is easy to accomplish, it requires you to spend enough to get enough points to qualify for a sailing.
What most people want to know is how to get offered a free sailing from Royal Caribbean's casino simply for having gambled on past sailings.
It's important to note no one knows exactly how the truly free comp offers are given out.
At the very least, you need to have gambled some in a casino on a Royal Caribbean ship at some point in the past.
No one really knows exactly how many points and even if you gamble a lot, the rhyme or reason as to why one person gets a casino cruise comp offer and not someone else is elusive.
AB3reddit posted, "Low roller here. I have never made Prime and don’t think I’ve ever made more than 500 points in a single year, but for some reason they do offer me a wealth of the “monthly” free and BOGO cruise offers (mostly just Inside and Inside Guaranty cabins)."
