If you’ve ever been annoyed on a cruise ship by people who “save” deck chairs by leaving towels, books or other things on them – sometimes for hours at a time, even though they’re nowhere to be seen – Carnival Cruises has a new policy that you may appreciate. In an attempt to combat these chair hogs, Carnival has implemented a system of staff members, known as “team monitors” to prevent this practice. The team monitors will observe the deck, looking for empty chairs that are holding items meant to indicate that the chair is being held, and place a sticker on those chairs indicating the time. If 40 minutes passes and the owner of the items has not returned, and the chair is unoccupied, staff will remove the items meant to hold the chair, and bring them to the towel station by the main pool. The staff will leave a note on the chair with an explanation.
This system, originally implemented several months ago, was at first only an active policy on the Carnival Breeze. After a month of testing and adjusting the system, the decision was made to expand the policy fleet-wide. This means that all of Carnival’s cruise ships should be relatively free from chair hogs.
The forty-minute time limit was determined to be ample time for pool goers to eat, drink, swim or slide, or visit the restroom. Carnival certainly does not wish to inconvenience passengers who are actually actively using the chairs, and the forty minute rule was arrived at over much talk and consideration. So far, it does not seem to have caused a problem for passengers, and in fact, the policy is quite popular with passengers, who now don’t have to worry that they won’t ever be able to get a chair.
All the evidence you need to know that the policy is working can be found on the pool deck of a Carnival cruise in the morning. In one case, a Facebook post by Carnival Cruise Director John Heald noted, “The message is truly getting to the guests as this morning at 9:00 am there were 81 empty chairs around the main pool and that as you will all know…is remarkable.” The success of the deck chair policy mans that all of Carnival’s cruise passengers will now have relatively equal access to the deck chairs. Carnival’s attention to one of the common frustrations of its customers, and the cruise line’s efforts to correct the cause of that frustration, will probably result in many more satisfied customers.
