Online casino promotions usually offer benefits like bonuses of various kinds, cash prizes, free spins on popular pokies and loyalty points. Sometimes the promotions go better and offer branded luxury goods and exotic holiday packages. But the Fortune Lounge group of online casinos does one better than them all. It conducts a mega promotion in which about 50 winners enjoy a week long luxury cruise. And it does this year after year. Royal Vegas and Platinum Play are popular online casinos of this group in Australia.
The cruise mega promotion was started by Fortune Lounge in 2006 as the International Casino Games. It was given this name because the winners of the cruise would play additional casino games on board for more prizes. The operational part of the eighth season of this mega promotion ended in July 2015. The winners are all set to go on the cruise later this year. The promotion has run continuously every year since 2006, except for two years in between. It gave way for other mega promotions like the Grand Slam of Slots. Somewhere in between the name of the promotion was changed to Fortune Lounge Cruise.
Though the details of the promotion change from year to year there is a broad pattern that has been followed. The gaming part of the promotion is spread out over 3 to 4 months. Different weekly events are held during this period, each with its own set of prizes. In the early editions of this mega promotion these events were pokie tournaments, wagering contests and prize draws. Now the events are more creatively an innovatively packaged. Along with the other prizes there are double tickets for the cruise. Events conducted on the cruise allow the winners to take home huge cash prizes and get special benefits on the cruise. The total outlay from Fortune Lounge for the mega promotion runs over AU$1 million. In the past the cruises have been in the Caribbean and in the Mediterranean. The winners this year will go to a Gold Coast cruise.
VIP host Tasneem accompanied the winners on the 2014 cruise. She described the cruise as a combination of “exhilaration, exhaustion and excitement”. She said that wherever they anchored floating lilos were lined up on the ocean’s surface and these were converted to a floating bar. Australian players at Royal Vegas and Platinum Play are already waiting for the ninth Fortune Lounge Cruise that will be held next year.