Resorts World Sentosa has reportedly set up an area on its main gaming floor dedicated to Singapore residents after complaints they couldn’t get access to tables and slot machines despite paying SD100 per day for the privilege.
Singapore citizens or permanent residents must pay either the daily levy or SD2,000 per year to enter one of the city’s two integrated gaming resorts, while foreign passport holders including citizens of neighbouring Malaysia, get in free.
In the weeks after Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) opened on 14th February, there were reports of local players facing long waits to pay their entry fee and then further waits to line up to have their identities checked. The system has reportedly now been made more efficient in order to reduce the amount of time spent in line. But the main floor, which is not yet fully open, is getting crowded with local and foreign players to such an extent that when AGI visited on a Monday afternoon recently, tables were ringed three to four deep by players, and slot machines had very few empty seats. Anecdotally, most of the ‘foreigners’ appeared during our visit to be Malaysian Chinese arriving by bus.
A source told AGI: “Singapore residents found that after paying their SD100 daily entry fee they couldn’t actually get a seat to play and were understandably upset. RWS’s solution has been to provide them with a dedicated area to play. How it will work in the medium term I’m not sure, as there may be some times when there aren’t so many locals in and the management won’t want to keep valuable floor space empty when there are overseas customers desperate to play.”
Reports in the local media in late May suggested the equivalent of USD70 million in entry fees had been collected by the casinos from locals. At that time, RWS had been open only 10 weeks and its rival Marina Bays Sands (MBS) only four. Under Singapore’s Casino Control Act 2006, the entry fee money is passed on to the Singapore Totalisator Board for “public, social or charitable purposes in Singapore”.
Meanwhile, over at MBS, queues are kept short with the installation of 28 NRT QuickTouch™ kiosks at its entrances to facilitate faster entry into the casino. The self-service kiosks, supplied by NRT Technology Corp, validate the identity of local Singaporeans, display payment options, process payment (cash, debit or credit) and confirm transaction status to a Host System.
The QuickTouch™ product reflects the result of NRT’s intense R&D efforts over the past 3 years. Its versatility allows users to purchase tickets, redeem points, make reservations, manage loyalty accounts, buy stored-value cards and perform authorized inquiries. Development of the special QuickTouch ™ kiosks for use in Singapore was the result of a close partnership between NRT and MBS over the past 10 months.
