Sunday sees the start of the Chinese spring festival or New Year. This will be the Year of the Boar (Pig) and the celebrations continue for fifteen days and end with the lantern festival. The gambling hotspots of Macau and Las Vegas will be bedecked with the colour red, which symbolises luck and by tradition is supposed to drive away bad luck. As many Chinese gamblers prefer to play baccarat, luck will be an important element for them.

As reported yesterday in the Las Vegas Sun, feng shui is increasingly used by many casinos in an attempt to make Asian customers comfortable. Asian marketing teams and staff with a command of Asian languages, particularly Chinese, are being employed to attract Asian gamblers both in Las Vegas and other places close to large Asian communities. The Chinese New Year is now the biggest gambling day in Las Vegas after the Super Bowl.

In Macau Stanley Ho has opened his landmark Grand Lisboa Casino in time to benefit from the fifteen day Chinese holiday. The other Macau casinos will also be helping gamblers mark the occasion and business is expected to boom. Gambling revenue in Macau in 2006 for the first time outpaced that of Las Vegas, bringing nearly US$7 billion. In the Chinese lunar calendar the boar is considered to be a lucky sign, so it’s a good bet that many Chinese gamblers will be testing their luck at casinos over the next couple of weeks.
(E-02.16.07)

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