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发帖数: 25262 | 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/nyregion/16bus.html?pagewante
Casinos and Buses Cater to Asian Roots
By DAVID W. CHEN
They are fixtures in Chinese newspapers: promotions for the Mohegan Sun,
Foxwoods and Bally’s casinos. And they list the bus departures, from Sunset
Park, Brooklyn, and Flushing, Queens.
At the gambling halls, Asian hosts, fluent in multiple dialects, welcome
customers with koi ponds designed by feng shui consultants. Asian game rooms
feature table games like pai gow poker and sic bo. For meal breaks, Asian
restaurants in the casinos dish out congee and roast duck.
Gambling requires a certain amount of luck, but when it comes to wooing the
huge pool of Asian-Americans in New York City, who fill buses bound for
local casinos, as little as possible is left to chance.
It is part of an unspoken compact among the casinos, the bus companies and
the city’s vast Chinese population, rooted in tradition, opportunity and
vice. But it has come under a public spotlight after a bus crash on Saturday
that killed 15 people returning to Chinatown from an outing to the Mohegan
Sun casino in Connecticut.
For years, casinos and bus companies have relied on a symbiotic relationship
to cater to an Asian-American clientele that accounts for as much as 25
percent of casino revenues.
Even after the last chips have been cashed, or the debts tallied, casinos
stay in touch with their best customers by sending postcards highlighting
future events like the Miss New York Chinese Beauty Pageant or concerts
headlined by pop stars from Hong Kong.
The personal touch is common, as well, one marketing executive who has
worked with casinos said. “They’ll call you up and say, ‘Why don’t you
come up and have a special steak dinner on us? Why don’t you come up for a
concert?’ ” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so
as not to anger clients.
And even as investigators try to determine what caused the deadly accident
on Saturday, one thing is certain: Given a spate of new casinos opening in
Pennsylvania, the lucrative and sophisticated competition to lure those
customers to Connecticut, Atlantic City and elsewhere will not just continue
but most likely intensify.
Culture is one reason gambling is so popular among Asian-Americans,
especially Chinese-Americans. Asian-Americans, carrying on a tradition from
their homelands, embrace games of chance and skill like mah-jongg, both to
make a bit of money and to be sociable; Las Vegas has long counted on a
strong Asian clientele.
In Chinatown in New York City, generations of men have played tile games in
basements. But with the emergence of Atlantic City in the late 1970s and
Connecticut gambling halls in the late 1990s, casinos became the preferred
outlet, said Paul J. Q. Lee, a longtime community leader in Chinatown, and a
former owner of a bus company that traveled to casinos.
These days, virtually every casino has an Asian marketing department,
ensuring that cultural sensitivities are accommodated.
The Mount Airy casino, in the Poconos, enlisted several designers versed in
feng shui. Some casinos assiduously avoid using the numbers 4 and 10, which
sound like the Chinese word for death. Mohegan Sun has a Chinese-language
Web site featuring the fortuitous number eight three times.
To reach their customers, casinos rely on the machinery of an old-fashioned
political campaign: direct mail, newspaper advertisements and posters. But
social media? Not much.
“They’re not going to go to Facebook,” said Peter Yee, assistant
executive director of behavioral health at Hamilton-Madison House, a social
service center on the Lower East Side. “They’re going to go to someone’s
uncle. It’s word of mouth.”
And casinos know their customer base. On Tuesday, for instance, The World
Journal, the leading Chinese daily newspaper catering to Mandarin speakers,
featured advertisements for casino buses to Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods with
pick-up locations chiefly in Flushing and Elmhurst, both of which have large
Mandarin-speaking populations. But Sing Tao, the leading paper for
Cantonese speakers, emphasized pick-up locations for buses to Bally’s,
Tropicana and other casinos in Cantonese neighborhoods like Sunset Park and
Chinatown.
The promotions are similar. For as little as $8 per bus ticket, customers
are offered a free meal (worth $15) and a gambling voucher (worth up to $45).
Some community leaders criticize the casinos as preying upon a vulnerable
and predominantly elderly population. “You make these things attractive,
easy and available, and not everybody has self-control,” said Peter Kwong,
a professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College. “It’s almost like
McDonald’s giving out free burgers to kids so they can get hooked on it.”
Others say that while the marketing may be predatory, the trips to nearby
casinos are harmless. “I see people bringing their kids up there,” said Mr
. Yee, who calls himself a recreational gambler. “There’s a whole
subculture that exists.”
One integral part to the success — or failure — of a casino trip is the
relationship between the casinos and the bus operators. In many cases,
casinos provide subsidies to the bus companies that can offset most, if not
all, of the buses’ operating costs. “The casinos work very closely with
the bus operators,” said George Toth. a former chief executive of Mount
Airy in Pennsylvania, and the Sands in Atlantic City.
The buses themselves have their own subculture, and even a hierarchy, said
Mr. Lee, the former bus company owner.
In the front are the regulars, people who go to the casinos several times a
week and are easily recognized by bus operators. These often include
grandmothers who have a couple of hundred dollars, thanks to their own
savings and money from the children. Behind them are the waiters who have
just been paid, and are likely to carry a lot of cash, and the newcomers.
And in the back, near the bathroom, are the non-Chinese and people who want
only to pick up a free meal and to sell their vouchers at a discount.
Orchestrating it all is the “tour guide,” or “daoyou” in Chinese. Often
an illegal immigrant, she (and it is almost always a she) functions as a
multitasking, ticket-collecting, peace-making liaison. “These individuals
are very, very important,” Mr. Lee said. “They make sure that Mrs. Wong
from East Broadway is happy.”
The tour guide often sits in the front, chatting nonstop with the bus driver
, making sure the driver does not fall asleep, especially on overnight trips
. It is not clear what happened on the fateful bus crash on Saturday, but
one of the 15 people killed was the tour guide. | a*o
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