Casinos Reopening

Alpha8472
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Casinos Reopening

Post by Alpha8472 »

Casinos are reopening in Nevada on June 4.

Indian casinos near San Diego, California have reopened. The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino near Sacramento is open now as well as Gold Country Casino in Oroville. Indian casinos are not required to follow state guidelines.

A few hours after the Hard Rock Casino opened, almost every parking space was filled. Patrons were leaving early as many people were not staying 6 feet apart. People kept taking off their masks to drink, smoke, cough, etc. There were no barriers between machines, but every other machine was turned off. Who wants to touch those dirty machines used by so many people?
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by ninersdd »

Hard Rock Tahoe will open June 4, just saw on the news.
klkla
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by klkla »

One of these large casinos is going to be the source of a hot spot if they are really being that careless about enforcing social distancing.

A friend of mine went to one of the casinos in Palm Springs and said that people were wearing masks and keeping a reasonable distance. The casino was also enforcing capacity limits.
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by Super S »

Some Indian casinos here in WA have reopened. (but not all) I am not going to venture into one yet, but my understanding is that barriers are going up where feasible, alternating slot machines are shut off, and many are not allowing smoking at all. I am curious what will become of the buffets at some of the casinos.
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by BillyGr »

Super S wrote: May 27th, 2020, 2:29 pm Some Indian casinos here in WA have reopened. (but not all) I am not going to venture into one yet, but my understanding is that barriers are going up where feasible, alternating slot machines are shut off, and many are not allowing smoking at all. I am curious what will become of the buffets at some of the casinos.
Was trying to remember a few that I've been at over the years - seems many of them had a setup where the employees were behind each area? That type would be pretty easy to convert to having someone serve you whatever you wanted (even if only on a temporary basis).
Alpha8472
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by Alpha8472 »

Casinos will lose a ton of customers if they ban smoking. The kind of people who go to casinos tend to be heavy smokers and drinkers. It is difficult to enforce no smoking. There are even ashtrays in the bathrooms.

Free drinks while gambling has been around for a long time. It is what keeps people at the gambling tables. If they are drinking they have to take off their masks. It is not very safe for other people sitting at the table.

If patrons have to go outside to smoke, they might just decide to leave early for the day. The casinos will lose a ton of money.

The Hard Rock Casino buffet was closed. There was at least one restaurant open.
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by storewanderer »

Some casinos in California never actually closed... they may have cut hours, but they never actually closed during this pandemic.

Not going to name any names, but they are the small backroads type casinos. Not major destinations.

There is a limit of 3 people at a time at table games in Nevada. Some smaller Nevada Casinos have pulled out tables to also spread out slot machines better for social distancing. Table games do not make much of a profit in smaller casinos anyway.
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by Super S »

Alpha8472 wrote: May 27th, 2020, 9:32 pm Casinos will lose a ton of customers if they ban smoking. The kind of people who go to casinos tend to be heavy smokers and drinkers. It is difficult to enforce no smoking. There are even ashtrays in the bathrooms.
I am not so sure if a smoking ban would affect casinos much in WA. While they are able to set their own rules on tribal lands, smoking has not been allowed in bars and most other public places in Washington in years. Many casinos have also expanded their non-smoking areas, in some cases they are whole separate rooms with their own entrances. If anything the casino operators have taken note of the fact that some people avoid casinos because of the smoking and are trying to accommodate them better than in the past. But there are still things that need work, such as having to walk through smoking areas for some restaurants.

Some casinos have busy non smoking areas with popular games. But I have been to a few in Oregon where they cater more to smokers and intentionally place the newest stuff in the smoking area, one I went to last year the non smoking side was literally a ghost town with old machines and few people.
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by klkla »

Alpha8472 wrote: May 27th, 2020, 9:32 pm Casinos will lose a ton of customers if they ban smoking. The kind of people who go to casinos tend to be heavy smokers and drinkers. It is difficult to enforce no smoking. There are even ashtrays in the bathrooms.
That same argument was used by restaurants before smoking was banned there... yet people still go to restaurants. The same for bars... people still go to bars. If they ban smoking in casinos people will go outside to smoke and then go back in and gamble. It won't make any difference.
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Re: Casinos Reopening

Post by storewanderer »

klkla wrote: May 28th, 2020, 1:37 pm
Alpha8472 wrote: May 27th, 2020, 9:32 pm Casinos will lose a ton of customers if they ban smoking. The kind of people who go to casinos tend to be heavy smokers and drinkers. It is difficult to enforce no smoking. There are even ashtrays in the bathrooms.
That same argument was used by restaurants before smoking was banned there... yet people still go to restaurants. The same for bars... people still go to bars. If they ban smoking in casinos people will go outside to smoke and then go back in and gamble. It won't make any difference.
Well smoking has not been banned in restaurants in about a dozen states. Obviously individual restaurants are free to have whatever policies they want. You must not travel to rural OK or MO very often where "smoking or non" is still a question in non-chain restaurants in smaller towns...

Here in Nevada when smoking was banned in most businesses, the large but shrinking segment of the population that smoked took its gambling and drinking business to the places that still allowed smoking.

For instance grocery store slot machine areas used to allow smoking then had to become smoke free; this caused a lot of problems (for stores that relied on slot revenue to keep low volume stores open) and slot play at grocery stores literally evaporated overnight (it wasn't that hard to find somewhere near the grocery store that still let you smoke and play slots). Some grocery operators tried to wall off their slot machines from the main store and then could allow smoking there again if it had a separate entrance. Others flat out removed the slot machines. A company called "Dotty's" opened little casino spaces next to numerous grocery stores in middle-lower income areas (the most productive grocery store slot machine locations) and allowed smoking and also sold cigarettes at very low prices to further lure the customer in to smoke and gamble. I will mention two chains that never had a slot machine in their store: Wal Mart and Target. But everyone else had them (grocers, drug stores, Kmart, Shopko, etc.).

Where that got most interesting in Nevada was with small bars that had small kitchen operations. The smoking ban disallowed smoking in bars that prepared food, but still allowed smoking in bars that did not prepare food (so they could allow smoking in the bar if they had a bowl of chips out, hot dog warmers were a gray area, but a fryer or grill meant no smoking allowed). Some bar operators walled off the kitchen area and started to pack food in "to go" containers and then walk it over into the bar where smoking was allowed. To this day there are still a number of facilities like this in Nevada.

On the gaming side various casinos outside Nevada have tried smoke free facilities, alcohol free facilities, etc. The numbers are always dismal and terrible because the core customer and audience for these types of businesses smokes.

As the amount of people who smoke keeps decreasing, I agree with you in theory that it should not make any difference in casino performance if the casinos disallow smoking. But go walk a casino floor specifically around the gaming areas and observe how many people are smoking in those areas. It is quite a few. It is like at least half of the customers, more in some places. Conversely as casinos expand to have more and more non-gaming offerings (entertainment, exhibits, better pools, etc.) the amount of smoking at those non-gaming exhibits is significantly less or none at all.

The other side of this argument is if the casino wasn't so smoky, some people who do not like smoke would go there more often. I am one who does not go into casinos anymore due to the smoke bothering me probably due to spending too much time in casinos or in other places where there were slot machines and smoking nearby in the past, and even if they were smoke free, probably would not go there any more often.

The entire point of the casino business is to get the customer in there and keep them in there as long as possible. I guess it isn't much different than retail trying to sell as much product to the customer as possible through layouts, etc. That is why there are so few windows and the doors are hard to find to get out of casinos. It is like a trap. Forcing someone to go outside to smoke, and some will decide well maybe I will just leave.

There will be a time when it will be time to ban smoking in casinos and it will be okay because the number of smokers will be small enough that it will not have a huge impact on the casinos. Based on my observations we are not there yet. Maybe another 10-20 years and we will be.
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