Survey | Junket association says 99pct in favor of smoking rooms

An association of junkets says it collected over 12,500 responses in a survey taken last week, where 99 percent of respondents believed that a full smoking ban will affect casinos’ business and agreed to have smoking rooms inside VIP gambling zones.
Having no English designation, the association is listed in the Official Gazette with the Portuguese name “Associação de Mediadores de Jogos e Entretenimento de Macau.” It organized a symposium on Saturday discussing the correlation between full smoking control and Macau’s entire economy; most of the participants demanded for the government to allow smoking rooms to be set up in VIP gambling areas.
The association chairman Kwok Chi Chung said that the survey was conducted among the junket sector, related employees and other citizens, where nearly all of the respondents were worried about the impact a full smoking ban would have on gaming revenue and employment prospects and advocated the preservation of smoking rooms for VIP gambling provided it does not affect employees’ health.
Lawmaker Zheng Anting, present at the symposium, was also among the advocates of smoking rooms. He suggested the revenue from the mass gaming floor didn’t decline but rather increased after setting up smoking rooms, which might be attributed to a better casino environment created by the smoking control.
Junket operator Neptune GD Group’s chief operating officer Denton Io 姚思銘 stressed ninety percent of the group’s VIP rooms are smokers and a full smoking ban will drive them away to Macau’s competitors in Southeastern Asia.
Moreover, casino operator Melco Crown Entertainment’s vice president in Strategic Marketing, Raymond Lo, predicted the policy, if implemented, would reduce the economic benefits by ten percent, as customers would need to leave the gambling tables for a smoke. BY