Your Cruise Your Way Cruise Blog

With the number of smokers dropping in the United States, lead by the young people who aren’t starting to smoke as much as they used to, you still have one in four who light up. California has a reputation for being worse at one in six or seven. If that ratio sounds bad to the rest of you non-smokers, keep in mind that in Europe smoking is much more prevalent and accepted. It may be improving though as witnessed by the governments of both Ireland and Italy who have banned all indoor smoking countrywide. France and Great Britain are considering similar laws at this time. Regardless, any ship that sails with a large number of Europeans is bound to be smokier than a ship filled with North Americans. But that too is changing, with Peter Dielmann river cruises being the latest to change their smoking policies.

Peter Deilmann Cruises is expanding the no-smoking restrictions on its European river fleet to include all areas inside the vessels beginning in 2008. The policy will become effective at the start of the river cruise season in March 2008. Deilmann, which operates a fleet of nine river vessels, first extended the smoke-free areas on its ships in 2005 to include all cabins and corridors along with its no-smoking policy in the restaurants. Now smoking will only be permitted on the open decks.
“We are happy to have our river ships smoke-free now that the laws in Europe are evolving to ban smoking indoors and we are adjusting our policy to reflect this shift in sentiment. The changing attitude in Europe helps us please our American guests even more,” said Ron Santangelo, Deilmann’s North America president. “This change fits surprisingly well with the growing interests of the majority of Americans who seem to prefer non-smoking environments. Over the years, more and more of our guests have indicated such preferences and we are absolutely delighted to offer them a smoke-free restaurant, a smoke-free lounge for evening entertainment and smoke-free cabins and corridors.”
Deilmann offers more than 270 European river sailings each year ranging in length from seven to 14 nights from late March through October (through mid-November in France). Seven-night river cruises begin at $1,470, per person twin in the April, October and November value seasons.