CONROY

It isn't easy being a pioneer. Just ask Carnival and Renaissance Cruises. In the quest to provide a smoke-free cruising experience, both tried and failed.

Carnival, the biggest cruise line of them all, designated one ship in its fleet to have a strict no-smoking policy in 1998. Six years later, it gave up on the idea, and the Paradise became a smoking ship again. Renaissance premiered as a totally no-smoking cruise line, but it went bankrupt in 2001.

Maybe aiming for a completely smoke-free environment on a cruise ship was too radical an idea. Even here in California, where less than 15 percent of adults still smoke and where we have the toughest smoking laws around, smokers are still entitled to a few places to legally take a drag. Even we nonsmokers understand that if someone is addicted to nicotine, they can't be expected to take a seven-night cruise and not light up. The question is, where should the limits be drawn?

For years, nonpuffers have told me that they would like to see designated nonsmoking rooms on cruise ships. It's easy enough to reserve a room like that at a hotel, but just about impossible to find on a cruise ship. Why is that? Because hotels do not assign a specific room to you when you make your reservation. That, plus the fact that most hotel guests only stay a night or two makes it much easier for hotel management to oversee the distribution of smoking and nonsmoking rooms.

Now we have a new pioneer in cruise line smoking policies, and my instincts tell me that this will work. Regent Seven Seas, a luxury cruise line, has announced that all staterooms on all of its ships will be nonsmoking starting in late December. Not only that, but it also will prohibit smoking on private balconies. Personally, I like that codicil best of all. I can't tell you how many times I've been out relaxing on my balcony reading a book and enjoying the fresh sea breeze only to have a smoker downwind of me light up and ruin the experience.

Like many cruise lines, Regent had previously prohibited smoking in many public rooms, including the dining rooms, but this is a huge step to tell guests not to smoke in their rooms and on their private balconies. The company sounds serious, too! Here's the fine print: "Failure to comply with this ban will result in guests being asked to leave the ship at their expense, without refund or credit for the unused portion of their cruise."

Really? Kick them off the ship? Now that's what I call serious. I got hold of Mark Conroy, the longtime president of Regent, to follow up on that statement. "I don't want to be the smoke police, but if you have a policy, you need to enforce it," he told me. "Smokers are very welcome on our ships, and I think they will find the restrictions we put in place no more draconian than what they face in everyday life."

I've always enjoyed interviewing Conroy because he tells it like it is without the usual corporate spin you get from most executives. I asked him if the announcement of this pending policy had resulted in any cancellations. He frankly replied, "About $3 million (in bookings), particularly on the world cruise, where we had a core of loyal customers who were heavy smokers."

I am aware of only one other cruise line, Oceania, that has taken such a strong policy on prohibiting in-room and on-balcony smoking. It is a relatively new operator that has a fleet of three ships.

You've got to appreciate the guts it must have taken for both Oceania and especially an established and very successful cruise line like Regent to shake up the cruise world with a policy like this. Although Regent Seven Seas is more expensive than many lines, my experience is that guests can't wait to book another voyage, and often do so before their trip ends.

I asked Conroy if there was anything else he wanted to add.

He said, "I want to make the point that this is not an anti-smokers action. We are in the business of saying yes to our guests, and the idea of being restrictive is completely counter to what we do for our guests every day. That being said, we looked for alterative ways to accommodate both our guests who are smokers and those who are not and could not find a practical solution that continued to allow smoking everywhere without impacting nonsmokers."

If you stop to think about it, you've got to wonder why smoking in cruise ship staterooms has been allowed to go on for so long. Forget, for a moment, about the dangers of secondhand smoke and the discomfort of the lingering smell of smoke for the next guest in a stateroom.

Smoking is a major fire hazard. The No. 1 anxiety for any seagoing captain is the thought of a fire at sea. Let's just say it could be a lot worse than those house fires you read about where someone was smoking in bed.

— David Loe, president of Radio Cruises, has been organizing group cruises for Ventura County residents for more than 20 years. Contact him at David@RadioCruises.com.