Smoking lounge locations carefully planned

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning arrangement for smoking lounges at the Venetian Macao

The locations of smoking lounges have been carefully planed by gaming operators. “Where the smokers are in the casinos, we certainly saw the revenue move to around the smoking rooms,” Mel Hansen revealed
MGM China’s Senior Vice President of Design, Development and Construction further explained that the locations of smoking lounges were picked to make them convenient, so that the customers could see them from all areas in the casino.
Technical details were also relevant when locating the lounges. The chosen places had to be located in places where extractor vents could be added into the ceiling space, something that is impossible in certain areas.
Sands China’s Vice President of Facilities Management, Michael Naylor, said that the company chose the number of smoking lounges and their locations based on assessments provided by its gaming team. “They gave us the areas that they felt needed to be covered and they also told us about the square meters that were needed for a number of people to smoke in the area,” he said.
“We just didn’t throw walls up because we figured this was going to last a year. We had two to three indoor air quality and mechanical consultants that we hired to help us develop a plan, and it was a thoughtful process on how big each space should be, based on our customer base,” he clarified.
Melco Crown Entertainment’s Vice President of Property Services, Joshua Ho, acknowledged that it took months to plan and develop the smoking lounges.
“Last year the government announced [new policies] around May, and we had to implement the entire system by October. It was a real challenge, first of all to find a location where we could build the proper ventilation system [for the smoking lounges],” he recalled.
Mr Ho added that they also had to take into account which locations are more convenient for casino guests.
He concluded by saying that, “the cost [of the planning] was also very high. We used consultants from Hong Kong and Australia. So the study and research was left to the gaming operators. And all six gaming operators were looking into this at the same time.”