Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | November 2012 34 Smokers Cornered The 1st January deadline to designate 50% of Macau’s casino floors as non-smoking areas is looming, and although the crucial issue of how VIP rooms are to be treated remains unanswered, as Cláudia Aranda reports, pragmatism will likely prevail A dispatch fromMacau’s chief executive published in the Official Gazette on 30th October finally offered some much-awaited guidelines to local casinos, who are required by law to designate at least 50% of their floor space as non-smoking areas by the 1st of January. Critically, however, the dispatch failed to offer clear details on how VIP gaming areas—where about 70% of Macau’s gross gaming revenue is generated—are to be treated. Macau’s Regime of Tobacco Prevention and Control (Law nº5/2011), which came into effect on 1st January this year, bans smoking inside most public venues. A grace period was given to establishments where the ban was likely to have the most profound deleterious impact on revenue. Bars, nightclubs, saunas and massage establishments have until January 2015 to set themselves up to comply with the indoor smoking ban. Casinos, on the other hand, will be allowed to maintain smoking areas across up to 50% of their floor space, though they only have until the beginning of 2013 to comply. The crucial question casinos were left in the dark about as the clock ticked down on the the 1st January deadline was how the smoking areas had to be delineated. The major fear was that smoking and non- smoking areas would have to be physically separated by walls, which would have destroyed the sightlines across many casinos, especially those where the bulk of the gaming floor sits across a single, expansive area. While thedispatch requiresnon-smoking and smoking areas in new casinos to be located in physically separated areas (either by a wall or placing them on different levels within the building), the rules are more flexible with regard to existing casinos, those already under construction, and those that have already received a construction permit from the Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau (DSSOPT). These are all considered “existing casinos,” according to the head of the Health Bureau, Lei Chin Ion. Phase II of Galaxy Macau, for example, is considered an existing casino. The major fear was that smoking and non-smoking areas would have to be physically separated by walls, which would have destroyed the sightlines across many local casinos.