Land casinos in Australia and New Zealand are making efforts to deal with the coronavirus, short of shutting down their operations. The major operators such as Crown Resorts have announced how they intend keeping their patrons safe, including disinfectant programs and restricting the number of customers allowed in their facilities.
As of this week, Crown Resorts said that it would drop the number of patrons allowed into its Crown Perth Casino and Crown Melbourne Casinos to 100 (down from 450). This was after consulting with the governments in Western Australia and Victoria who advised them on the steps they would need to take in order to remain open.
Other measures adopted by the casinos include:
- Enforcing the rule of ‘social distancing’ by placing a prescribed distance between players’ seats at table games and deactivating every second gaming machine so that patrons don’t stay too near to each other.
- Stand-up table games are only allowed to have five players around it.
- Providing hand sanitizer to all employees and patrons at the casino.
While it still hasn’t decided to close its casinos altogether, Crown’s rival, Star Entertainment, said it would be shutting down its facilities for up to four hours each day to perform a deep-clean.
It seems that until the Australian and New Zealand government give their concise instructions to casinos to close shop, they will continue operations, albeit with stricture measures.