remain closed until 2021<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, with exceptions for students and travellers from New Zealand.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt means casinos can no longer rely on wealthy Chinese gamblers and VIPs, and have been focusing their efforts on local customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Star Gold Coast’s group executive of operations, Geoff Hogg, said: “We do have some domestic customers that will be pretty critical and we’ll be trying to focus on them to come to the Gold Coast.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The casino reopened its gaming floors on Friday, and Hogg says hotel rooms are already booked, restaurants are full and the situation could grow when state boarders from Queensland open soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hogg told ABC News \u201cnow to be operating a lot closer to full capacity is fantastic.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, foreign customers represented about a tenth of the casino\u2019s business and are not expected back until next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another negative factor is that the Chinese government has recently warned about racist attacks being committed towards Chinese travellers in Australia after the Covid-19 outbreak, so casinos are hesitant about a rapid return of Chinese high rollers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wealthy Chinese gamblers had made up to 10 per cent of the casino\u2019s business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Australian casino operators, notably The Star Gold Coast, are strategically pivoting to focus on domestic high rollers due to prolonged international border closures and geopolitical tensions impacting the return of wealthy Chinese VIPs. This shift addresses the significant revenue gap left by international clientele, who historically constituted up to 10% of their business, necessitating a re-evaluation of player acquisition and retention strategies.","focusai_entities":"The Star Gold Coast, Geoff Hogg, ABC News, Chinese government","focusai_location":"Australia, Gold Coast, Queensland, New Zealand, China","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (0.7), operator_casino (0.95), marketing_crm (0.85), investor_analyst (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Domestic VIP acquisition?","query":"What specific marketing and loyalty programs are Australian casinos implementing to effectively acquire and retain domestic high-net-worth individuals, given the historical reliance on international VIPs?"},{"label":"Geopolitical risk mitigation?","query":"How are Australian casino operators assessing and mitigating the long-term geopolitical risks associated with Chinese government warnings, and what impact might this have on future international VIP market re-entry strategies?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,28],"tags":[289,229],"class_list":["post-7962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-casino-news","tag-australia","tag-gambling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7962"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7980,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions\/7980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}