Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | October 2012 26 the agents, know who they can provide credit to? Clearly they don’t—especially the Western casinos. Knowledge Is Power “The Western operators are very good at building a fancy casino, but they don’t know the customer. So they have to rely on the junkets. Some of the casinos have tried to go direct by having their own high roller program to some of their mass hall customers. But even when the casinos have their ‘own’ in-house VIP room as it were, they need those VIPs that can bring in money as a deposit,” explains the source. This effectively rules out most potential VIP customers from mainland China. “If the person says, ‘I’m rich but I can’t bring in any money to deposit’, the casino will say ‘That’s too bad. We want to serve you, but we can’t serve you if you can’t make a deposit.’The casino may have to refer them to the junket anyway. The junket is able to take care of all these problems,” states the insider. Paying Up Just as VIP recruitment is pointless without credit collection, so the In Focus V IP rooms are often mentioned in reports about gaming revenue in Macau, but most people don’t really know how they operate. The VIP room is essentially a symbiotic and highly specialized marketing operation that exists within a host casino operation, providing a pipeline of high rolling players to the property. Although the table game operations within the rooms are run by the casino operator, all the other action inside is controlled by the VIP room operator (who is either a junket himself and brings his own players to the room, and/or allows one or more other junkets to operate in the room). The VIP room operation recruits players, provides them credit to play with, then collects all gambling debts, and does so independently of the casino operator, who can disavow knowledge of any questionable methods used to transfer funds or collect debts. VIP rooms are owned by the casino in which they reside. Independent VIP room operators can either lease out a room at a fixed rental, or be allowed to operate within a room by the casino if they can meet certain turnover targets. The VIP room usually has its own junket cage or cashier counter, where a set or sets of chips unique to that room are used. Although the casino operator provides the VIP room with dealers and security personnel, the other staff within the room are generally employed by the VIP room operators. These staff are mostly public relations (PR) hosts (who perform the function of ‘rolling’ chips between the players and the cage, exchanging cash chips for junket chips) and junket cashiers. You can easily tell the VIP room operator’s staff apart from the casino’s staff because the former are usually adorned in strikingly colorful two-piece suits. The PR hosts are predominantly young, good looking Chinese ladies, while the cage is mostly staffed by middle aged ladies. The VIP room managers will be older, and may be either male or female. The junket cage manager is usually a long-serving, loyal and trusted employee, who more often than not has a direct reporting line to the VIP room operator, independent to that of the room manager. Above the managers sits the general manager or the owner’s representative, who is the primary liaison for all the different junket operators who bring their clients to that particular room. By contrast, the VIP rooms in casinos in Las Vegas and Australia are a direct Behind Closed Doors