Casino Junkets Hugely Important for the Asian Gambling Industry

Casino junkets were always a part of the Asian gambling culture. A casino junket is a group of individuals who are organized by a tour leader (usually called the junket rep) going together on an organized trip to a casino. Casino junkets are formed for gaming purposes, and they are not to be mixed with complimentary tours or vacations offered by a casino. Think of it as a gaming trip.

Although the Asian casino operators are now more open to the mass-market proposition, casino gambling still has a kind of VIP aura in the region. According to Singapore gambling news, junkets still continue to dominate in the Asian gambling industry.

“In Asia junkets are very important in particular,” says Hoffman Ma, deputy chairman of Success Universe Group, and the owner of Ponte 16. “For all new destinations to be competitive this model must be built into the system. Take Singapore. They’re having difficulty now because the system hasn’t been fully built due to regulation and licensing issues” explains Mr. Ha about the inflexibility of the Singaporean gambling laws.

Why is the junket system so important in Asia? There are a lot of high rollers to be found in the region, and they need a way to spend their millions in the casinos. Even though there was a decline in their spending volume, VIP’s still continue to dominate certain markets, for example Macau, where their revenue outperforms the mass-market’s.

The junkets only use online capabilities as an additional facility when they play at online casinos in Singapore. Easy access is the keyword in an online operation. Junkets are, one the other hand, closed circuits of people, carefully selected. It will take some time till the Asian gambling industry can transfer the skill of recruiting and maintaining a network of high net worth people into the online world.