Macau’s government on Tuesday announced rules for a blanket smoking ban on all levels of public market casinos in the city. However, it remains unclear whether the ban will affect VIP areas in some high-end public areas isolated from key floors and typically individual rooms.
“We are still waiting for the Game Inspection Coordination Bureau to come up with an official definition of the VIP area,” said Zhang Zhang Yip, deputy director of Macau’s health bureau, on Wednesday.
According to the new rules included in the Macao Administrator’s Dispatch 141/2014, casino operators can ask to install smoking areas with game tables and slot machines in “regions with limited access to certain games and gamblers,” which GGRAsia knows could mean VIPs or even certain premium public areas. These “restricted access” areas will be defined by the gaming bureau, and specify the new rules.
The regulation does not specify the maximum size for these areas of “limited access.” The regulation only states that the size of smoking areas along with smoking lounges must be less than 50% of the entire casino game area.
Premium mass market players top the mass market using bets measured at thousands of Hong Kong dollars per hand. Macau casino operators said premium mass players offer higher margins than VIP gamblers because casinos do not have to pay commissions to junket operators. Several casinos already have separate rooms to cater to these customers.
Under the new smoking rules, all casino floors in the public market in Macau will be non-smoking from Oct. 6, after the Golden Week holiday in October. However, operators can create smoking lounges on the public market floor without game tables or slot machines. In theory, they will be similar to smoking rooms at major airports.
The smoking lounge must be physically separated from the rest of the casino floor and have automatic sliding doors. There is no limit to the number of smoking lounges each casino floor can have.
“The ban on smoking in large casino floors will benefit both players and employees,” Chang said.
According to a Macau government-sponsored survey released last month, 58.4 percent of casino workers don’t want to work in VIP rooms after full smoking cessation was imposed on the mass market. But 12.7 percent of the casino workers will be willing to change their mind in exchange for a special allowance.
Mr. Chang said there are no rules for game operators to offer special allowances to employees who work in smoking areas in VIP rooms, but the government expects casino companies to do so. “It depends on the operator,” he stressed.
Mr. Chang said that casinos that cannot install smoking lounges on the public floor will have to quit smoking altogether until the new rules take effect. But they can install smoking lounges on the public floor later
BY: 홀짜게임