ATLANTIC CITY — Thursday marks the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit, an animal on the Chinese zodiac freighted with good fortune both for a city that needs it and the growing group of Asian gamblers who love to visit.
For decades, casinos have catered to an Asian culture that favors gambling more than most other societies, evidenced in everything from the shows they offer, the restaurants they build and the colors they decorate with.
The trend has no end in sight. By some estimates, Asians account for a third of all table gaming in Atlantic City, with buses from Philadelphia and New York entering the resort daily.
“It’s a huge market,” said Israel Posner, director of the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming, Hospitality and Tourism at Richard Stockton College. “I don’t have any reason to believe it’s going down.”
In recent years, every casino here has added traditional Chinese games such as minibaccarat, sic bo and pai gow, many of them in Asian-specific pits, where the lucky colors red and gold adorn the walls and the very unlucky number 4 is nowhere to be found.
Gambling has a special place in Asian culture, which puts more faith in the ability to influence luck given the appropriate attitude and reverence.
“It’s really based on the entire philosophy on the way life is lived,” Posner said. “It’s not just about gambling, it’s about how they approach fate, chance and luck.”
Last year, the Macau region of China set a global record for gambling revenue, raking in an estimated $23.5 billion — nearly four times that of the Las Vegas Strip and more than seven times that of Atlantic City.
“That’s really woken a lot of people up to the importance of the Chinese market,” said Roger Gros, publisher of Casino Connection and Global Gaming Business. “Although Atlantic City has catered to it for years, casinos throughout the country are starting to figure it out.”
“Some of them are here every day,” said Steve Callender, vice president of table games for Tropicana Casino and Resort.
Callender started his career as one of the first dealers at Resorts in 1978. He said he has watched casinos alter their marketing techniques through the years as they have realized the importance and potential of attracting the Asian clientele.
Tropicana, like most others, has its own pit dedicated to games traditionally played in Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino and other southeast Asian cultures.
It also has gourmet Asian restaurants alongside fast-serve noodle bars and special shows throughout the year.
Looking for luck with the holiday
The Lunar New Year is also one of the biggest events of the year for Atlantic City. With festivities and promotions planned, it ranks up there in popularity and attendance with national holidays.
“We’ll get a bang for our buck for a few days,” Callender said.
That’s not peculiar to Atlantic City either.
“The New Year coming up is probably the biggest gambling day of the year for Asians because it determines how they’ll do the rest of the year,” said Gros, explaining that a winning day then portends a winning year. “They like to gamble to get that feeling.”
David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said casinos in Las Vegas are keenly aware of that fact as well.
“All the casinos put up red and gold,” he said, referring to colors considered lucky in Chinese tradition. “It really kind of transforms the Strip for a while.”
In Atlantic City, every casino organizes special events for the new year, but few put on as lavish a display as the five Harrah’s properties. They organize a parade down the Boardwalk on the following Saturday — Feb. 5 this year — with traditional Chinese entertainment and crafts on display from the afternoon deep into the night.
Hann said the effort began in order to acknowledge and welcome the Asian clients who were already coming to his properties, but now the company continues to try to attract more customers from that demographic.
“With the whole tourist district and the revitalization potentials, we’re going to attract more tour and travel customers coming over from the Far East,” he said. “To have Atlantic City be more of a destination stop to the traveling population, that’s something we’re working towards.”
A prime location
Because there is such an influx of Asian players in Atlantic City, casino companies have hired many bilingual employees to help those guests.
That, in turn, has boosted the number of Asians living in the area. According to the latest U.S. Census figures, Asians make up only 6 percent of Atlantic County’s population, numbering about 17,400 residents, but that’s more than Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean counties combined.
And that influence in turn spreads throughout the resort, to the shops and restaurants throughout the city.
“It’s not only about gambling. It’s also about entertainment and food service,” Posner said. “They love to shop, and they’re very brand conscious.”
Last fall, Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford traveled to China to entice billionaire investors into investing in the city, as well as to meet with officials in South Korea about setting up an exchange program for Richard Stockton College and Atlantic City High School.
This year, groups such as Sinova Consulting LLC hope to boost the city’s Asian clientele by adding the resort to the list of East Coast locations on tourism packages for Chinese visitors.
Sinova CEO Ron Gabrielle said the attraction of Atlantic City, with its scenic location, amenities and gambling offerings, has it well positioned to take advantage of these trips. He said once he is able to negotiate appropriate room rates, he could be routing buses into the city on a daily basis.
The resort is in a prime location, between New York City and Washington, D.C., to attract Asian tourists hoping to see the best of this side of the U.S., Gabrielle said, and by the end of the year he expects to attract as many as 10,000 of them.
“What the upper limit of that number could be is anyone’s guess,” he said.
To take advantage of that potential customer pool, Gabrielle signed an agreement with Vineland-based electronic payment processing company BC Processing that would allow interested merchants in Atlantic City to accept China UnionPay credit cards. The China UnionPay card is the national bankcard association of China, Gabrielle said, and has two billion worldwide customers.
“Acceptance of the card in the Atlantic City region is seen as an important step towards luring the lucrative Chinese market to southern New Jersey,” Gabrielle said in a statement announcing the agreement, adding, “This is a source of revenue that is desperately needed to stimulate the local economy.”
Source;pressofatlanticcity.com
